


A I

by Everlind



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Drama, Kite (and his tight purple pants), M/M, Oshitari, Very Mild Gore, attempts at humor, hopefully not too much OOCness, questionable ethical issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:50:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 50,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Can you make a robot love a human? But isn't the question: can you make a human love a robot?' (A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

The darkest hour before dawn he wakes with a violent start. He scatters papers and USB drives as he scrambles around himself, the sensation of being dragged down still having a hold on him. The keyboard clatters as he knocks into it and his computer screen flares to life.

Shishido blinks at it, strings of programming staring right back at him, almost as if seeing the face of someone familiar and trusted. Then he slumps back, rubbing at his cheeks. He's bathed in cold sweat. The dream itself eludes him, but one thing lingers - the feeling that he's not alone. The hair on the back of his neck rises and he snaps his head around abruptly, even though he knows very well the room is empty.

Well, not  _empty_.

With a sigh he twirls his chair around and looks at it. Kon's electromechanical insides spill out, trail in a tangle of color-coded cables to the ground. Some parts gleam and glisten, as though moist.

His back pops agonizingly when he gets up and walks over, grabbing the ever-present vaporizer from the corner of his desk. Liberally dusting water over those parts and well within every hollow he can reach, Shishido smiles grimly.

At least one good thing about being suspended. Now he can keep an eye on this, otherwise he'd have had to attempt to complete this over the weekend without work intervening. Seeing as it's taken him nearly two weeks to get this far...

A small thrill runs through him. He's  _never_ gotten this far. 

Or he has, yes. And how. If he hadn't gotten as far he wouldn't be here, at home, holed away inside and angry. 

But not with Kon.

Shishido looks at it and feels himself smile. It pulls oddly at his face. Unfamiliar.

As soon as it came, it melts away again, leaving a bitter twist. What if he got this far only to fail again? Like he did on all other five projects?

No.

He turns away, every single line of his face etched with determination. Not Kon. It's different.

Shishido moves about, checking the new lines of programming he added, unsure of their use and effectiveness. Either he's writing way too much useless code or too little. Both is bad, in case of the former it can lead to contradictions and in the latter incentive cause-consequences and so much damn more. Then again machine learning should take care of that.

He doesn't know. No wonder he gets himself suspended every six damn months.

The blinds glow pale from where the slats overlap. Almost morning. The rush of traffic is building. He's tired, time to get some rest. 

Getting some sleep in a proper bed instead of on his desk chair will help.

The skin between his shoulder blades crawls warningly. Again he turns, but sees what he always sees: his tiny apartment. The whole living room, kitchen and a good part if his bathroom can be seen with one look. Just him.

And Kon.

Maybe he should just go to sleep or he'll end up as fucked up as his colleagues.

Nudging paper and wiring aside, he crouches down, pulls at the sheets of his futon. He crawls under the them, at a time when most of the city is rolling out of them. Shishido moves and lives at a different pace, caught in a bubble of home-wrought isolation.

His body sinks down gratefully, aching. It feels good to stretch out and let his lids drag shut, like lead weights.

Lines of programming run before his mind's eye. He turns, tosses. The side of his face itches maddeningly, that sixth sense everybody has to some degree, warning him. 

The feeling persists. Even though he  _knows_  better.

He does. 

Still he gets up, fetches the sheet. Tosses it over the figure laid out on the table. Covers it completely, tweaking at corners.

Only then he can close his eyes and feel alone -as should be.

As he is.

Seems like getting a serious mind-fuck in this job is unavoidable, he's already as bad as his colleagues.

Just an occupational hazard like every kinda job has… he tells himself.

***

The shrill ring of his doorbell wakes him.

His eyes part reluctantly, like two magnets sensing their polar opposite. The ceiling swims into bleary view, in all its cobwebbed glory.

The bell shrieks abuse at him again.

Shishido groans, feeling rather displaced, as though his body is an unwieldy sack of flesh and his mind a flighty something still clacking away at a new line of code, never having come to bed with the rest of him. He wonders if it managed to finish Kon.

Pushing himself upright, Shishido rubs his eyes with his fist, smacks his lips. His tongue tastes stale, like he's been breathing with his mouth open. Bright bars of light poke through the blinds, stabbing at his retina. He groans some more. Dust motes swirl lazily around. Early afternoon, he guesses. 

More ringing.

Shishido heaves a martyred sigh, rolls out of his futon and lurches towards the door. It only takes him a few steps.

The usual confrontation with the door handle begins then and it's only after ramming his right shoulder against the door he hears the click of victory and he can pull it wide. Jiroh stands in the entrance, looking rather like a ray of sun himself, candid smile in place. He looks way too awake for once.

Shishido scowls.

"Gooooood morning," Jiroh says, grinning. 

Shishido grunts, cave-man like, stands aside to let him in.

Jiroh's smile wavers as he catches a whiff of him. Shishido frowns some more. Jiroh's smile returns full force, slightly manic with mischief.

"You reek," he informs him happily, as he walks into the room and does a slow turn to properly appreciate the absolute chaos. "When was the last time you showered?"

Shishido grunts again, then blinks as he realizes he has no damn clue. The last few days seem just like one big stretch of digital letters and the endlessly complex insides of Kon.

Kon.

Turning to look he's just in time to see Jiroh whisk the sheet away like a magician procuring a trick.

He clamps his lips shut over the urge to say something about it. Jiroh knows, he was there when they were roommates way back when and Shishido started hammering away at it. It was him who came up with the name Kon because he feared that Shishido's constant referring to 'the body' would get them into trouble. Which stuck, because after a while calling it that seemed as though inviting it to become just that, a soul.

Still, it feels private. As though having to bare his inmost being to someone. Which is absolute bullshit.

"He looks so real," Jiroh murmurs, leaning over it. "Like he's sleeping."

To Shishido it just looks like it always does: incomplete.

He rubs the crumbs of sleep out of his eyes and knows that Jiroh is right, that he needs to wash himself and eat and get a fucking grip. Situations like these make him wonder why Jiroh is still here. Why he even bothers. Then again Jiroh has always struck him as very alive and terribly  _human_. Shishido smiles, a not particularly happy twist of lips. That. Oh yes.

Meanwhile Jiroh, with that eternal dose of curiosity motivating him, reaches to touch. Almost instantly he snatches his hand back, blood draining from his face. 

Shishido walks over, "What's wrong?"

Jiroh takes another step away, eyes huge. "He feels real. Ryou. He didn't feel real before. Why does it feel like I am- like I am- touching, I. Why? How?"

What does it say about him that he can't quite fathom the intensity of Jiroh's reaction? The job, Shishido thinks. Watching others put together robots which look so real you'd never be able to tell unless you peered inside. Having done exactly that himself for years. That combined with not having been outside for about a month. Not having talked to anybody. Having blocked his phones and methodically deleting his e-mails each time he wakes up. Being a 'stupid-head', like Jiroh'd say. Acting like a sulking baby, his aniki'd say.

"Cool huh? I've only just finished replacing the skin." he says, walking over and poking the chest-area. "Fuji's work. You know, that weirdo from Aesthetics I've told you about. Took him four years to perfect that. It's semi-organic, almost the real deal."

Jiroh is rubbing his arms, as though cold. "Almost," he echoes hollowly.

Shishido nods. "Almost, otherwise it'd decompose."

Jiroh shakes his head and looks away. "You need to get out. You're giving me the creeps."

Throwing the sheet over it again, he smirks. "Boo," he says.

An unimpressed snort. Jiroh flaps a hand at him. "It's your stench that freaks me out most, though. Seriously, get a damn shower."

Shishido heads for the bathroom.

"And shave!" Jiroh yells after him. "You look like a primate!"

 _Having friends is so nice_ , Shishido thinks, rolling his eyes.

But his smile is genuine this time.

***

Washed, shaved and dressed in clean clothes, not to mention outside and in human company, makes Shishido realize just how stupid he's been acting. 

No matter how morally-depraved his job is argued to be by some, he's still human. Thank fuck. If only it were possible to have androids take over what they're attempting to do. Then again it takes a human to know how to be one so the argument ends before it can be one.

A huge pot of steaming tea is set out on the table and a plate with his order arranged on it slides under his nose. Sakuno flashes a timid smile at him, which Shishido hardly sees because his stomach growls in agony. His mouth waters. He can't remember when he last ate.

Jiroh watches him salivate over his food. "A cheese sandwich. You live on nothing but powders and capsules for who knows how long and then you go and order a cheese sandwich. I think you've gone around the bend." Demonstratively he all but inhales a chocolate eclair.

"I feel sorry for you and your chocolate eclairs. Cheese sandwiches are the king of all food, poor mortal," without further ado, he bites from it.

Oh damn.

Yeah, he's done feeling sorry for himself.

He takes another bite. And another. It's gone before he realizes it.

Jiroh is watching him with a rueful grimace, which turns into a bright and rather manic grin when Marui appears at the table. 

"I take it you'd like another one?" he says, smirking.

Shishido can't muster the will to be annoyed. He just wants more food. He nods. He can't even work up a scowl when Marui returns, bringing the plate himself instead of Sakuno, just so he can quip about 'not being able to resist his genius cheese sandwich making skills'.

Jiroh's eyes sparkle as he watches him waddle back to the kitchen.

"Marry him already," Shishido grunts. "Instead of just making goo-goo eyes."

"Shut up," Jiroh mutters, mouth a pout as he looks back to his plate.

"Or thinking about taking Atobe up on his offer?" Shishido continues. "You have awful taste."

"I barely even know Atobe," Jiroh says. "What are you getting at anyway? Awful taste in what?"

"Never mind," Shishido says, shaking his head. "Maybe I should parade you out in front when I go back to Tannhauser. He just might let me come back earlier when I trot out an appropriate incentive."

Jiroh catches on. He frowns. "Are you going on about that again? Well, Atobe is awfully nice and all, but I don't believe a word of it. I think he's with that strong silent guy that was trail-"

"Kabaji?" Shishido exclaims. At Jiroh's nod he proceeds with choking on his sandwich. Spluttering, he laughs loudly: "It's an  _android_ , Jiroh. A walking, talking can-opener."

For some reason there is no instant sheepish reaction. Just cold shock. A chunk of eclair falls to the table. "He is?"

Nodding, Shishido tentatively grins. "Yeah, the newest and the most advanced of everything. It's the boss' droid and all."

There's a long silence. Jiroh stares at the eclair on the table, pudding leaking out of it. "Is he… already what you are trying to-" he flaps his hand vaguely.

"No," Shishido says. "It isn't. We still haven't been able to- not for real."

Jiroh looks at him, eyes shrewd. "Is Kon?"

Uncomfortable, Shishido looks away. "Not that I know of. Yet."

"Still haven't activated him?"

Slowly, Shishido shakes his head. Looks back to Jiroh.

"I'm not sure you should," Jiroh says. "Ever."

Shishido nods.

Both know that he will anyway.

***

He thinks about what Jiroh said when he pulls back one of the lids, shines with a light in the eye. The pupil contracts violently. He clicks the light off and watches how the muscle slowly dilates again in response. Semi-organic. Without aid of the penlight, the black of the pupil is nearly as dark as the brown of the iris. They look like they ought to move, but of course they don't. Just the basic functions are switched on, allowing for some minor tests. They will move (or should, in any case) when he 'flips the switch'. Then everything'll… move.

It's not really alive. Not even when activated.

Not really.

Shishido sighs and looks into the chest cavity. Takes out the 'heart' and grimaces at it. Only Oshitari could come up with that kinda rubbish. A small spherical object, which he insists is of utmost importance when they attempt to re-create the whole 'body, mind, heart equals soul'-theory. It is not only the motor, or battery if you will, for technically the android can run about 24 hours without it. Until the reserve supplies of energy are used up and it'll shut down, that is. But the drive he holds is also supposed to allow for it to become a  _someone_  instead of a  _something_. While everything the android needs to know to act human and to understand humans is located on a small drive situated in the head, this has a certain algorithm on it.  _The_  algorithm if you will. The one they still haven't found. 

It's true that Shishido, especially compared to his colleagues, isn't really cut out for this work. He's just not smart enough. He's clever and quick on the uptake, but he hasn't got Inui's or Yanagi’s inherent talent for this. They all have their strengths: Inui is good at making certain codes, algorithms, heck, programs, utterly fool-proof. Yanagi is better at grasping the whole concept of everything interacting together, how certain algorithms might contradict one another, which become superfluous when combined with others. Niou is more the mechanic of them all, able to take the software and make it interact properly with the hardware, so that everything it does, it'd do it like a human would. Oshitari is the shrink. Of them all, he's the one they all expect to achieve true AI first. The real deal. Consciousness, empathy, being aware of the 'I', everything that tallies up to being human.

And Shishido?

He mostly blows things up.

***

Last time that was literally.

He's only pretending to be one of the top dogs because he and Atobe go way back. But after his latest screw-up, Atobe was left with no other option but to temporarily suspend him. Oh, he'll be allowed to come back. Until something else goes wrong. And then the cycle will repeat all over again until someone gets hurt.

Might've happened last time if it weren't for Hiyoshi's timely -ahem- intervention (and laser gun). 

Shishido doesn't want to have anybody get hurt. He really doesn't. 

Yet he's more careless when he's on an official job. Takes wilder risks. Which is terrible and makes no sense, because Kon here, being as illegal as it gets as his 'home-brew' project stemming back from his university days, is something he is nothing but patient and careful with.

How long has he been working on 'Project Soul'? On Kon? Longer than ten years.

Shishido turns the heart over in his hand. Closes his fingers around it. A little larger than a marble at most. It's cool now, but will grow warm when he finally does 'flip the switch'.

Flipping the switch being Oshitari's skewed kind of humor and pushing the heart-shaped button on the front.

What a screamer.

Shishido rolls his eyes. Everybody working on achieving AI has turned more than a little strange over the years. Not that they were normal when they started out, or anything, but not like this.

Putting together a human being… no, a thing that looks like it. A robot. Android. Semi-organic machine. Making something like that, with your own two hands, it does something to you. Making non-humans and trying to make them be or act like humans just screws your brain over into a nice murky soup.

If anybody ever found out about what he's done here, his work would be destroyed instantly and he'd go to jail. Maybe Atobe could get him out, but he'd never be allowed near the means to make a second attempt at a 'Kon' again.

He just didn't pull strings of code and algorithms out of his ass.

He downloaded part of his brain (a big no-no) and modified it -something that wound up so full of contradictions and stuff that just doesn't make any fucking sense- that surely it'd crash any sort of system instantly.

Instead he put it on Kon's heart-drive (another joke of Oshitari's).

Maybe he'll push the button and Kon'll blow up in his face on the spot.

Or maybe he'll be the first to achieve AI. Before Oshitari.

The idea, however improbable, makes him smile.  

He holds the heart-drive in the palm of his hand until it grows warm from his body. Then he slides it back in place.

Goes to bed.

Falls asleep even as his skin crawls, uncomfortable and alert, always.

Kon lies on the table, uncovered. Inactive.

***

Exactly thirty-five days after he got suspended, Atobe calls him.

Shishido is stuck up to his elbows into the hollow of Kon's stomach, trying to get a certain connection to stop from spitting sparks at him. He might have sorta kinda downloaded some of Niou's blueprints and the memory unit holding them might have kinda sorta accidentally on purpose have fallen into his backpack and he might have not bothered to return it. It's a good thing he didn't, because going over them again he noticed a fatal faulty connection in the wiring running inside Kon's spine. Had he not caught it he thinks Kon might literally have shitted a fireball upon activation. Which would've been really lame.

So the call doesn't come at a very timely moment.

Muttering and cursing he tries to withdraw both hands, gets his watch caught on the lower rib of the artificial skeleton and drops his soldering bolt into the mass of electromechanical gizmos. There's a spark, a hiss and then a lot of smoke.

Shishido curses, snatches the core drive out of the chest, grabs the fire extinguisher and blasts it.

Peers inside, heart hammering. 

Ruined.

 _Goddammit_.

He shoves the drive into his back pocket and stomps into the kitchen. Takes the call on the videophone.

Atobe's snooty face appears on the screen.

Shishido scowls at him. "What?" he snarls.

Atobe twitches an eyebrow in response. "What did you blow up this time?" he asks.

Shishido realizes he's still holding the fire extinguisher. And that his right sleeve is smoking. Fuck it. "Cooking accident," he mutters, putting it aside and checking whether the videophone is not catching any glimpse whatsoever of the toasted android in his apartment. The toasted, highly illegal and not to mention made up out of 70% of borrowed 'spare parts' from the company android.

"Didn't know you could cook," Atobe says, smiling in that way which makes Shishido want to try and throttle him through the videophone. 

A muscle near his eye jumps. "What do you want, Atobe?" he grounds out. The longer this takes, the worse the damage to his work.

"Do you even wish to return, Ryou?" Atobe sneers. "Because if you do you are doing a poor job of conveying it."

His heart skips a beat. "Ah, I- yes. I do. Of course."

And not only because he wants to, needs to, but because he suspects he might have need of more borrowed 'spare parts' soon. In the living room, Kon emits a sizzle. More smoke erupts. 

Shishido tries not to groan out loud.

"Are you sure?" Atobe is saying. "You don't sound very convinced."

Gathering his scattered wits, Shishido sighs and says, "Look, Atobe, you know I want to. You know how much this job means to me."

There.

That ought to make Atobe happy, pleading enough without begging. Enough fodder to needle him for months to come, Atobe's favorite pastime.

A smirk. Not at all professional. "Alright, because ore-sama is magnanimous and forgiving."

Something short-circuits in Kon's voice box. There's a sound that resembles an emergency siren and a cat getting it's tail stepped on. Shishido winces.

"What on earth are you doing in there?" Atobe demands.

"Er, I think my cheese sandwich is burning, I really gotta go-" Shishido mutters. "See ya tomorrow!" 

"Ryou! Wai-"

He signs off and dashes into the living room, fire extinguisher at the ready.

***

Breathing in deep, Shishido peers through shield of his helmet up at the building.

Rain drops burst apart before his eyes, roll down the waxed surface. Tannhauser is holed away in a surprisingly rustic, dignified building, situated far from the city and surrounded by lush forests. It takes him an hour to drive out there. Usually the waving green fields and ancient, knotty trees calm him but now he still feels butterflies in his stomach.

He screwed up. Bad.

Once, here.

Second time just yesterday. He tries not to think about the horrific sight of that stripped down skeleton back home.

He needs to get a grip. 

Releasing his chin-strap, Shishido gets off his motorcycle, ruffles his hair and proceeds by walking face-first into Kabaji's chest. He rebounds with an 'oomph'.

"Fucking hell, Kabaji," he mutters, rubbing his nose. For all that Kabaji sports Fuji's nice, strappin' new skin as well, the synthetic muscling underneath matches the outer package completely: hard as iron.

"Tie," Kabaji says to him.

Shishido blinks, then scowls. "I'm wearing a jacket, how would you know?"

Kabaji stares at him.

Shishido stares back and wonders whether Atobe has had x-ray vision installed on him. Suddenly he feels very exposed. "I am wearing a tie," he lies as he starts for the entrance.

Kabaji looks at him. Shishido suppresses the urge to cross his legs, which he can't anyway cause that'd mean instant face-meets-pavement maneuvers. Instead he holds his helmet strategically before his crotch. Not that it'd help, but it makes him feel better anyhow.

Of course, this makes Taki raise a rather pointed eyebrow at him as he badges the door open and enters. "Wet your pants?" he asks.

Shishido glares at him.

Taki smiles and starts to file his nails. "Welcome back," he adds. "Atobe wants to see you. Right away."

"Sure, I'll go now," Shishido lies and moves over towards the elevator. 

Just as he arrows his finger for the third floor's button, Taki says, still not looking up from his very important daily manicure: "Kabaji, Atobe-san says to make sure Ryou doesn't make any side-trips."

"Usu."

A large finger appears under his nose and stabs the button for the top floor instead.

Resigned, Shishido steps inside the elevator. Better not quarrel with the large, muscly android with x-ray vision. Even if he really doesn't want to talk to Atobe.

At all.

The elevator chimes and Shishido slouches uncomfortably inside Atobe's office. There's a rug with leopard spots in the middle of the room, Shishido always cringes when he sees it. Then he cringes at the cacophony of scents the bushels of roses give off. Lastly he cringes at Atobe's lavender ruffled shirt. Being exposed to Atobe's peculiar take on 'fashion' is never a good way to start of the day, the least of the side-effects being instant-and-guaranteed Bad Temper, with a vaguely nauseous feeling to chase it down. 

"Ah, Ryou," Atobe says. "Please take a seat."

Shishido takes off his jacket and notes Sanada's and Oshitari's presence. 

He's toast.

"Tie," Kabaji says meaningfully.

Shishido glares at him.

Kabaji is, unsurprisingly, unaffected.

"Yes, Ryou, where  _is_  your tie?" Atobe asks. 

Seating himself, Shishido tries not to get too unnerved by Sanada's very disapproving look. And not to wonder how many weapons the Head of Security has on his person currently.

Crossing his arms, Shishido snorts and grumbles, "Is this about my tie being absent or about-" he stops.

"About a certain android that went rampaging and nearly ripped poor Dan's head off?" Atobe finishes for him. "Why yes, it just happens to be so."

"Well," Shishido begins defensively. "Well, it's not like it succeeded. I mean, Hiyoshi got him before"- certain tactful advice Jiroh once gave him suddenly sets of his bells, something about digging one's own grave and worm-fodder echoing in their pealing -"Er, yeah. What about it?"

Sanada frowns at him. Shishido is pretty sure it is his default expression, but he now he gets the feeling it is quite genuine. The skin on his forehead burns. Then Sanada opens his mouth and Shishido has to fight not to physically brace himself. "To assure the safety of you and your co-workers," he pauses, possibly for added effect, and then adds, "and  _everybody else_  in the building, I am stationing Kite on your floor along with Hiyoshi."

There's a pause. Shishido meets Oshitari's eyes. Lifts his eyebrow. 

An unmistakable expression of glee crosses Oshitari's face.

_Kite of the tight purple pants._

Shishido pinches the bridge of his nose.

As though Hiyoshi isn't bad enough.

Sanada leans closer. "Do not take that added security as a sign to set another toe out of line. He's there to keep an eye on you and you personally."

"Uh-" Shishido goes. "I don't really think it is necessary for Kite-san" -( _and his tight purple pants_ )- "to watch out for me. I won't blow stuff up again," he promises. Then reconsiders and adds, "Nor will I make murderous rampaging androids."

"Don't worry about it, Ryou," Atobe says smoothly. "If you are confident there will be no mishaps this time around, then you won't have to worry about Kite-san and any appropriate measures he might take to keep you from doing so."

"Right," Shishido says faintly.

"You are dismissed," Atobe says, flapping his hand at the door.

Shishido tries to walk all cool and collected towards the elevator, despite the lingering burn of Sanada's eyes anchored between his shoulder blades. Oshitari squeezes in just as the doors start to close.

"That wasn't so bad," he says.

That deserves a look. He gives Oshitari one at maximum power. Ultra-blistering.

Oshitari smiles. "At least we'll have Kite  _and his tight purple pants_  to look at."

Shishido restrains himself from punching Oshitari. Won't do to give Kite  _and his tight purple pants_  any reason to act pre-maturely.  

"Why were you there, anyway?" he demands. "Besides savoring the humiliation of my downfall?"

"I personally doubt that you ever managed to get up after the first time you blew something up. Regardless," -he says loudly when Shishido opens his mouth to protest- "I wanted to ask you about your killer droid's heart-drive."

Uh-oh. "Yeah? What about it?" Shishido grunts, quasi-casual.

The elevator chimes as they arrive at the third floor. They get out. 

"There was a  _peculiar_  string of code on it. Despite displaying a rather severe personality disorder, I think that you actually managed to do just that -give it a personality," Oshitari explains.

Shishido follows him to his workspace. "Yeah, so? Gakuto has a personality." 

"One I programmed," Oshitari adds. "But I doubt for yours to have been programmed to be a psychopath, or did you?"

Shishido lets it sink in. Tries to comprehend whether this might foreshadow Kon's activation. After all, he programmed sections of the algorithm he created for Kon's heart-drive on the one that went rampaging.

A severely altered version, of course, but still.

Yet that doesn't mean that activating Kon will equal getting his skull bashed in.

He hopes.

***

"There ya go," Shishido murmurs, carefully withdrawing his hand.

Most of Kon is still spread all around him (now also covering his futon and most of the kitchen counters, as well as dangling over the edge of the shower tub). It's rather depressing to look at, but Shishido's biggest concern was everything located higher up than the shoulders. Besides the fried voice box, everything was intact. After all, Kon is not only very nearly indestructible, but also water-proof. Just not soldering-bolt, combined with a blast of fire-extinguisher proof where exposed wiring is concerned. Even so, after taking it apart with trembling hands yesterday, a thorough clean-up showed that the damage wasn't insurmountable. The voice box was a lost battle, however. Having to acquire a new one was actually for the best, he finds, because Niou had just finished a new version, one that -in Shishido's mind- had different options for pitching that would match Kon better. He tries not to think about the price tag that particular 'spare part' had.

Today, his apartment feels empty. Vast and yawning. Every single noise he makes seems inappropriately loud. It's been a while since he felt like this -alone- and he half expects to find his voice echoing in the seemingly endless feeling of space.

Leaning his elbows on the table, Shishido looks across Kon's open maw of a torso to where the 'innards' lie. Sometimes, he wonders why he bothers. Most of the time he feels like he's walking next to his self, unable to connect. Things happen, things that he knows ought to be important, but they flow past him with the barest trace of an impression.

Here he is, in his early twenties, with no girlfriend and this shoebox of an apartment. He thinks he could rent larger, but doesn't really see the purpose of doing so. He shies away from the high probability that he'll be like this -exactly like this- ten years later. And the decade after that as well. It's hard to imagine going out and… and meeting someone, a girl, and trying to please her and buying a bigger place and getting married and becoming a father.

He's not sure what he wants.

Not even sure what he's looking for.

This… urge. For something he doesn't get, but that's always there -maddening-, nibbling away at the insides of his chest and mind.

It makes him so tired.

Inhaling deeply, he reaches for the penlight. Shines inside the empty android and then at everything strewn around him.

If he works all night long, Kon might be finished by Friday.

Tomorrow evening.

***

"You look like hell," Oshitari says as Shishido stumbles into the reception area, feeling rather hung over due to a lack of sleep and too many energizing capsules.

He's leaning against Taki's desk, obviously not doing any of the work he's supposed to be doing. As usual. Taki looks up, too, applicator of his nail polish poised over his pinky. His nails sparkle. Shishido is hard-pressed to remember that their secretary is male. Taki is nothing if not dedicated to his job and all the clichés surrounding it.

"You mean he sometimes doesn’t always look like something that got hit by a garbage truck?" Taki feigns shock. "You lie!"

Shishido flips him off.

Taki demonstratively paints his middle finger.

Kabaji appears out of nowhere and says: "Tie."

"Goddammit!" Shishido snarls. "Did Atobe have x-ray vision installed on it, huh?" 

Oshitari pushes away from Taki's desk, all languid grace. "I think Atobe has had a lot of things installed on him, na Kabaji?"

Kabaji seems to unsure whether to answer this.

Shishido tries to suppress his horror at everything this might imply, firmly not thinking about x-ray vision, rockets, detachable parts and extra options.

By the time the elevator has carried them to the third floor, Shishido has nearly managed to suppress all the disturbing 'upgrades' Kabaji might have had installed and is starting to feel moderately sane. Until Yuushi feels the need to brightly say: "Good morning to you, Kite-san!" whilst adding to Shishido from the corner of his mouth "- _and your tight purple pants._ "

Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad fate if Kon did wind up bashing his skull in.

He manages to shake Oshitari as soon as he starts discussing work -actual labor- and finally finds himself in his workspace. The table is empty, no trace of what he had created here left. The prospect of building a new one doesn't entice him. He's got a near-finished and perfect android back at his apartment. Yet imaging putting the finishing touches on Kon here doesn't seem right.

Kon isn't his job.

It's his passion.

It's private.

It's  _his_.

Still, he's here and he’d rather do something than play Pong all day like Oshitari does. With a sigh he grabs a new drive and he turns towards his computer.

It's past midday when Oishi stumbles into his office. He looks flustered.

"Shishido!" he greets him heartfelt enough, "I heard you were back. Are you… okay?"

Shishido rather likes Oishi, they get along. He swivels fully towards him and grins, "Same old. From scratch again, I suppose."

"Aa," Oishi goes, rather distracted. For a moment he seems upset, but then he begins talking: "Have you eaten? No? You should, Shishido, it's important to have regular, nutritious meals and you look like you've been slacking off. Lunch, then?"

Before he can nod, Oishi is tossing him his coat and nodding towards the door. He might as well. Oishi's right, he could do with some real food, instead of forgetting to eat altogether.

They go to Bunta's. All roads lead to Tensai Tarts, or so Oshitari proclaims when he needs to feed (which is always). During the ride Shishido -even being dense as he is- notices something is seriously bothering Oishi. He's jumpy and on edge. It's weird asking what's wrong (what if it is something embarrassing?), so he decides to keep quiet until Oishi should feel the compulsion to start talking about it himself.

He does. Shishido has barely managed to chomp down the first half of his cheese sandwich when Oishi finally stops his unnerving fiddling about with his food and says: "There's something wrong with Eiji."

Despite being ravenous, Shishido puts down his sandwich. Gives Oishi all his attention.

Oishi twists at his napkin and looks away.

Relenting, Shishido presses, "What's wrong with it? Did something snap off again?" He'll never forget how a panicked Oishi stumbled into their workspace, carrying a limp and twitching Eiji, screaming 'OH MY GOD SAVE HIM!'. It was a good thing Oshitari had just finished developing a highly pliable yet sturdy skeleton and that besides having broken in half, Eiji was perfectly salvageable. Took Niou only a week to put it back together -with new skeleton.

Oishi shakes his head, looking rather as though he wishes it were only that. "No… no," he murmurs. "Shishido. This has to stay between you and me. Can you promise me that?"

"Uh," Shishido goes, rather doubtfully. Liking Oishi is not enough to withhold any sort of information, regardless of its nature, just because of friendly feelings. It could get him fired as well, were it bad enough. 

Then he remembers all those 'spare parts' he's loaned -with a generous helping of guilt to wash it down- and nods, slowly. "Alright."

"I think Eiji is… alive."

Shishido stops moving.

"There's… someone in there," he continues, haltingly. "It's not just awareness. I think he feels. That he  _is_."

They look at each other. Shishido shivers, suddenly cold to the very marrow of his body.

"There's a person in there."

He breathes, shuddering, yanking his eyes away as though he's been told something indecent. True or not, Oishi believes it. Fiercely. "Fuck, why didn't you tell someone else this, huh? You gotta… tell Atobe. Oishi, you  gotta- we have to-"

"No!" Oishi rises halfway out of his chair as he yells it.

His jaw clicks shut in shock. Never before has he heard Oishi raise his voice. Okay, yeah, that is not counting last year's yakiniku incident, but fuck knows what fuse blew in Oishi's brain then (close encounters of the third kind, Niou'd theorized).

But never like this.

"No," Oishi repeats, softer and self-consciously, sitting down again. "This stays between us. I don't want anybody to… pick him apart if he has."

Shishido opens his mouth to protest, but Oishi interjects. "I know they will. You know it, too. They'll take him apart to see what made him… him."

There's a moment of silence. "Why did you tell me this? You can't tell me and then expect me to- to- Fuck, Oishi, we've been working years on this.  _I've_ been working years on this. Decades before us people have been trying and… you say yours  _is_? Finally? And I can't tell?"

The silence that follows states that this is  _exactly_  what Oishi expects. 

"Fuck," Shishido says, rubbing at his face with both hands. His appetite is gone. "I can't Oishi," he murmurs. "Dammit."

"Shishido." Oishi says, all reasonable.

Shishido hates reasonable.

"Please," he adds. "I don't want anybody to take him apart. What if they… damage  _him_."

Groaning, Shishido asks himself why this kinda crap always happens to him. If this is true, then they are poised on the periphery of changing the world as they know it forever. For good or worse. If he's the one to find out how and why and how to duplicate it… it physically dizzies him. His whole life'd change, for the better, having made that breakthrough. It would. He's sure of it.

On the other hand it's hard to believe that Eiji would suddenly gain complete and utter AI, the sentient, emphatic sort. A manufactured yet true consciousness. For all that Shishido has been fascinated by this since receiving his first autonomous toy dog when he was an ankle-biter, he's never actually _believed_  it could happen. That in that part organic, part synthetic hull, there'd grow a someone. Maybe that's why all his attempts fail, because he doesn't truly believe it can be done.

But now Oishi is saying it has.

And Shishido is not allowed to tell. Anyone.

"What makes you so sure?" Shishido asks, voice cracking. "What makes you so sure it isn't the programming tha-"

Oishi cuts him off again. "I just know," he says.

***

The whole conversation still rankles uneasily through his mind later that evening.

Granted, the idea of activating Kon has always been accompanied by certain reluctance. Activation means the end of what has occupied most of his spare time for the past  _years_. Working, completing and perfecting it have been on his mind, always, constantly. It was something that kept him occupied, when he was sad or dejected, or even when he was so euphorically overjoyed that he had too much energy even an hour of jogging didn't manage to burn.

He's not sure what he'll do when that is gone.

But that isn't enough reason to stop him from doing it.

Even though he's been stalling for weeks, there's a point when you just can't deny you've come as far as you could and you need to take it to the next stage to advance. That's where's caught now. Kon's finished. For all intents and purposes, has been for quite a while. Admittedly, that time was spend mostly refining the outer packaging.

With, now that he really looks, amazing results.

It does look real.

Over time, as he aged and changed, so has Kon. At first Kon was everything Shishido wasn't and wanted to be. When he first started drawing up silly and unrealistic plans for it, when he was fourteen, Kon would have superpowers and unrealistic physical proportions (rather like an old-school Western comic book hero). When he was sixteen, Shishido, not very gifted in the height and muscle-department, let alone blessed with remarkable looks, designed Kon to be tall, stupendously muscular and down-right unnaturally gorgeous. The first full-scale attempt at building him, two years later, looked exactly like that.

He's not sure how much of that first prototype is still inside the one lying here on the table, but it can't be more than five percent.

For some reason it's hard to grasp its final finish, other than that it is still tall, admittedly better build than he is and remarkable. Though in a thoroughly flawed, human way. 

It's time.

Now or never, Shishido supposes. 

As soon as he reaches, he realizes the heart-drive is gone.

The realization is like an electric current snapping right down his spine. He checks all around him, frantic and wide-eyed and feels the very first and very real touches of utter hysteria (in a decidedly un-lame, manly sort of way).

_Where is it?!_

He knows he held it just this mor… ning. In his left shirt pocket. He can feel its weight, its shape against his chest. Carefully, he takes it out. He doesn't remember having put it there. Still, it's intact. Virtually indestructible it might be, but the idea he might have lost it along the way… and… and maybe even someone finding it… yeah.

Quickly, he puts it where it belongs. It takes a firm push, followed by a distinct click as it slides in the slot. It's warm from having rested against his body the whole day, he feels it against the fingertip that lingers over the small, barely visible nodule. Again he hesitates.

His heart hammers painfully. It leaves him feeling light-headed and surreal.

For an instant his eyes jump to the crowbar within hand-reach, though he's not sure it would do much good would he be forced to use it.

But he's never one to back down. He started this and he intends to finish it. By any means necessary.

He breathes in, deep.

Breathes out.

Pushes.

His hand fumbles as he withdraws it and closes the hatch. It slides into place noiselessly, naturally. The lines melt until all that's left behind is a bare chest. That suddenly rises on an inhale while he stares at it.

He nearly falls off the table in shock, because some part of him didn't believe this…  _this_ , holy fuck, though he designed it to do exactly that, he knows, and has made and seen it happen before, but this, not this. Somehow he just didn't.

That's all that happens.

 _It's booting_ , Shishido tells himself wildly. This is completely normal, yet he feels as though he ought to do  _something_ , anything to- to- he doesn't know what, exactly.

It inhales again, steady and deep. On the exhale something changes in its physical appearance, too subtle to name yet  _there_. Very much there. Not ten centimeters away from him the fingers twitch, then curl into a fist. Skin pulls taut over the knuckles, veins flatten - _not real!_ , Shishido tells himself- and the wrist joint becomes more pronounced.

Suddenly he is very, very conscious of the teensy little fact that he didn't put any clothes on it.

Knowing that he himself painstakingly crafted and designed every single physical feature - _everything_ \- doesn't dispel the rather belated realization that he'd have felt much, much better if he had dressed it.

This leaves him in the uncomfortable position of watching a completely naked man stir and open his eyes, android or not.

But those eyes opening wide, almost startled, pupils instantly shrinking into tiny pinpricks and the brown of irises bright under the light,  _that_ , that sends a thrill of pure ecstasy and sheer fear to his gut.

Carefully, Shishido leans closer. Of course, the first thing that leaves his mouth after dedicating nearly half his life to this project and finally seeing it reach its pinnacle, is:

 

"Yo."

Sometimes, Shishido thinks, Atobe is right.

 


	2. Part 2

Dark eyes veer towards him and they both jump when their gazes knock into sudden contact.

Shishido is not sure what to do, or what to say, mostly worried at what he  _might_  say, should he open his inane gob again. Instead they sort of stare at each other. Kon starts to sit up so he backs away to give it some room.

Hovers while Kon blinks against the harsh light, seems to try and gets its bearings.

"How are you feeling?" Shishido asks tentatively, having to lick his lips to get his dry mouth to move.

Kon looks at him, head slowly turning, opens its mouth. Then it looks down its own arm, where it is braced on the table. Shishido has to smile wryly when he watches the realization sink in that it is naked. The sudden rush of color to the cheeks pleases Shishido inordinately. He can't believe it works… so… realistically. Had he not put it together with his own two hands not even twenty-four hours ago, he wouldn't ever have known. So real.

And no murdering rampage. Yet. Just extremely discomforted squirming and attempts to cover its modesty.

"Sorry about that," he mutters. "Didn't mean for you to be uncomfortable."

 _Of course it is,_  he reminds himself.  _You programmed it to be!_

"Let me get you some clothes. Stay here," he tells it, then advances on the corner where a make-shift closet vomits clothes all over the floor, asking himself where the hell a naked android would skip off to. Somehow he's pretty sure he's not making a very glowing first impression.

It's dark, barely past midnight and besides the lamp next to the table, all is shadows. Shishido paws through the mess, hoping to locate something that'd fit it. Luckily he buys most clothes a size or two too large. 

With a pair of worn sweatpants and a huge sweater, he approaches the android again. "Here," he says, softly. "The legs won't be long enough, but I'll make sure to pick something up for you tomorrow."

The modesty is rather funny, not to mention ironic since they both know Shishido… well, made him. All of him. Down to the very last detail. Suddenly this strikes him as pretty fucked up. He wonders what Kon thinks about that,  _if_  it has any opinion about it at all.

Slowly, the android pulls the sweatpants up -they are way short-, then the sweater. That done, it sits rubbing its arms, cold. It can feel that. Shishido made it able to.

Their eyes meet again and this time they hold the contact. 

"Kon?" Shishido says softly, "Do you know who I am?"

The eyes are shaded as it lowers its lids, lashes dark and thick. A nod. 

There's a pronounced silence.

"Shishido-san."

The sound of his own name jolts him physically. The voice is not quite what he imagined it to be, not a baritone as he planned it. A low tenor, warm and steady. Most of all he's shocked at the politeness of it. Shishido wonders at how the android seems to form a huge part of its identity autonomously. He meant it to be able to, but it surprises him how naturally some aspects form.

Kon looks at him. "Is that my name?" it asks, "Kon?"

"Uhm," Shishido goes, caught off guard. "It's what I've always called you," he offers.

"Me," Kon says, then nods. It slides to the edge of the table, swings its legs towards the ground. Shishido is painfully aware that there's so much junk on the floor it's hard to avoid treading on anything.

"Sorry about that," he says again.

He feels awkward. Somehow it is not quite happening at how he's always fantasized it would.

Toes touching the ground -long slender toes, large yet delicate seeming feet- Kon tests its balance, then stands.

Shishido looks up. And up. 

Tall. Very. 

Maybe he went a little overboard there. And what was he thinking giving it such light hair?

Odd.

But nice, all the same.

Kon takes up a lot of space. Shishido is very aware his apartment is small and cramped and a horrible dump and what the hell is he - are they- supposed to do now?

For all that Kon is moving, operating correctly, there's something not quite… not quite right.

"Kon," Shishido says.

The head snaps instantly towards him. 

"How are you feeling?" he asks, carefully pronouncing.

A head tilt, but no answer. As though Shishido commented on the sky being red.

"Kon," he prompts, then lifts his brows to indicate he'd like an answer.

"My feet are cold," Kon answers, almost hopefully. As if liking very much to provide the exact right answer.

Shishido breathes in, searches for something that ought to bring about a clear indication of… of… "How do you feel about me?" he tries, knowing that there are endless different emotive states Kon might link to him if. If.

There's a pause. Kon seems to be thinking about it. Eventually he offers, "I don't understand. I don't feel you. We're not touching."

Shishido closes his eyes.

 _Dammit_.

Disappointment wells up, sharp and intense, making the back of his eyes warm, his fingers tremble.

"Shishido-san," Kon says, sounding worried ( _because that's how I programmed it to react_ , Shishido thinks bitterly). "Did I answer wrong?"

"No," Shishido sighs. Opening his eyes, he absentmindedly pats the shoulder. So damn real. He forces a weak smile.

"You answered exactly as I expected."

***

They spend the night clearing the apartment. With Kon helping, it takes them about four hours, but it's clean when they finally finish. Not smelling of stale food and overtly-sweet energy drinks, the floors completely cleared. The place looks positively huge. That's an optic lie, because they have to maneuver around one other in order not to bump.

It's just that Shishido can't recall the floor being bare ever since the first day he moved in.

He yawns, hugely. 

"Are you sleepy?" Kon asks, sounding interested.

Shishido nods. 

This is weird. He feels unhinged and disappointed and so very, very tired.

It's been a long day.

It's been a long everything just to wind up here, empty-handed.

He sinks down on his futon, neatly laid out in the corner.

"I'm going to bed," he says, voice thick.

Kon nods. "What should I do while you sleep?" it asks.

Shishido looks at it. Tries not to let the bitterness flood into his eyes, even knowing it doesn't matter whether Kon sees it or not. Not like it cares. Still, he can't help but feel fondness there, for this thing he's made, for all the time and effort and risks and blood, sweat and tears spent over it. 

This is as far as he's made it.

Not very.

He looks at the face, takes time to study its peculiarities: the dark, almost severe brows accenting brown eyes. The face is very masculine, high cheekbones and strong jaw. The nose is straight, longish, above a generous mouth. The skin is smooth, flawless, though pores detail it, fine lines etch mobility on it. Light hair, vaguely curly.

Handsome, he supposes.

And perfectly blank.

 _Enough_ , he tells himself. Enough.

Shishido looks at it and says: "Kon, shut down."

 

Kon shuts down.

***

Next day finds Shishido in a clothing store, tired and frowning at everything.

Does it even matter?

Kon was a failure.

That what he so desperately hoped for just didn't happen. He knew. Somewhere, he knew. He knew it wasn't possible and he knew Oishi was just seeing things that weren't there, because he spends an unnatural amount of time with that droid and he knew he was an idiot for hoping.

Yes, it is true. He did have a hand in Eiji's programming and there might be some lines on his heart-drive from questionable origins, not to mention legal content. Codes like that never make sense. If you were to disassemble it, if you were crazy enough to, it would be a load of gibberish.

There's still so much unknown about the human brain and while scientific progress has managed to theorize about what most is used for, about ten percent remains an absolute mystery.

Some say that it might be the blueprint for the soul.

Due to the large amount of ethical controversy about the subject, messing around with those ten percent (and most of the rest, actually) -especially in regard towards computer science- is strictly forbidden.

But hey, his name wouldn't be Shishido Ryou if he didn't at least… poke it.

Yes, he downloaded that obscure part nobody knows what its use is, but he adapted it. Heavily. Okay he didn't really poke it, he kinda went and mauled it. And sure, it might have been a blueprint from his soul, but by the end it was a blueprint that -he hoped- might invite the spontaneous and natural generating of one.

Idiocy.

They're machines. And that which is organic is grown, man-created, like everything else about them.

With laden hands, he takes a pair of gray slacks from the rack. Not something he'd wear, but nice. Would fit Kon, at least. That combined with a t-shirt and a button-up ought to do, right? 

He doesn't quite understand why the hell he's buying clothes for it, when he doesn't actually intend to… whatever it would have been had Kon not been a failure. Fact remains that he has a badly clothed android in his apartment, which is kinda creepy, and that he can't quite… well. No matter how you look at it, Kon is one of the most realistic looking -and feeling- androids out there. The cold 'lack' all androids have is there, the emptiness, but his face and all the rest of him, well. Not to toot his own horn, but he thinks Kon might just be the best he's ever seen. 

No, no question about it.

Kon's a piece of art. 

The best.

And after dedicating so much time to creating it, it feels kinda cruel to leave it as it is. Not that he worries about Kon's feelings, but his own sit uneasy with it.

Which is why he shells out more for the clothes of his home-brewed android in one go than that he pays for his own whole stupid wardrobe in six months.

Time to face it. His life?

Pretty damn fucked up.

***

"Kon, activate."

Shishido watches its chest start to rise and fall, the eyes open.

Brown. Like this night.

"Shishido-san," it says, mouth curving. "Hi."

"Hey," Shishido manages gruffly. 

"I am sorry I did not answer that question satisfactorily," Kon murmurs, head tilted down and apologetic.

No hunk of metal should look so sincere. Shishido flaps his hand. "There was no right or wrong way to answer it."

It's late afternoon. Skies turn steel-gray early yet, but true night holds back. Soon spring will arrive, with warmer, sun-lit days on its heels. Maybe he should go on vacation, someplace with the sun burning on his neck, sand between his toes. He thinks of that when he wanders into his shadowy kitchen.

He's got some rice and fresh vegetables. Now that he doesn't have Kon to obsess over, eating real food might not be a bad habit to pick up again. Especially after years of not eating anything that didn't come in a capsule. Maybe he didn't get too rusty. Hopefully.

Pan in hand, he flicks on the stove and rice cooker. Dicing the carrot, he wonders if he should push it and attempt curry.

Kon watches him do it. For some reason its presence is easy to ignore. Maybe he's come to terms with not having succeeded and he sees it for what it is: a fancy walking, talking can-opener. With extra options and a nice packaging. That is currently sniffing his bamboo shoot.

Shishido watches, circumspectly, still dicing away. 

Putting aside the bamboo shoot, it reaches for a daikon and holds that up to its nose, too. Turns it around in his hands, finger pads rubbing. Shakes it. Puts that aside, too, and peers into the plastic bag. 

It rustles as it reaches inside.

"What are you doing?" Shishido asks, looking over his shoulder. The slices become rather malformed.

Kon fishes out the button-up. "These…?"

"Yeah," Shishido mumbles, embarrassed for some inexplicable reason. "Can't have you walking around with your ankles bare like that. My neighbors would be scandalized if they knew."

That makes Kon look at him, eyes wide and shocked. "You think? I am sorry, I didn't know humans don't like it when-"

"Kon," Shishido interrupts it. "That was me being sarcastic. Better get used to it."

"A sharply ironical taunt," Kon says.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he nods. "Perfect answer. Full marks, buddy."

Kon's mouth twitches, it happens so fast that Shishido wonders whether he imagined it. "I got used to it," it says. Right then Shishido wants to wheel on it and figure out whether his friggin' android just made a quip, but Kon opens its mouth yet again, expression distraught: "Shishido-san, watch out!"

To all carrots comes an end. Especially when dicing. Of course, there's still your fingers. Into which Shishido just cut. Deeply.

"Crap!" he yells, yanking the hand towards him before starting to shake it, useless gesture as it is, flinging blood in all directions.

There's a moment of utmost chaos with Shishido doing an ouch-ouch-crap-fuck dance, accompanied by the horrible lyrics of his cursing and Kon flapping about him and getting in his way and then suddenly grabbing his wrist. Shishido pulls and Kon yanks and Shishido pulls again, starting to protest.

An irrational stab of fear lances through him and he starts to resist, violently. But Kon is still pulling, gently enough, and then his hand is under the cold water and he gets it.

"Uhm," Shishido goes, throat constricted.

The water is cold and the edges of the cut tremble against the rush of it. For a long minute the only audible sound is the heavy splatter in the sink and their breathing. It takes a while before the water runs clear of blood.

There's a deep gash in his left index finger and a shallower one in his middle.

Kon releases him and Shishido finds himself rather hastily pulling away, cradling his chilled hand against his chest.

"Please be more careful," Kon says softly as it twists the faucet.

He can only nod mutely. His fingers pound and his hand is cold.

Catching his gaze, Kon asks, "Have you any bandaids around?"

"In the bathroom," Shishido answers. "I think."

When he moved in here he supplied the medicine cabinet with necessities like any responsible adult would. Seeing as he never opened it but once -to fetch tweezers to pluck at the more delicate wiring of Kon- he's not sure if any of it is still useable. But after rummaging around in it, Kon unearths a packet of bandaids. 

"Here, better put one on to keep it clean," it tells him.

For some reason Shishido lets it do that, standing there rather numb and confused as the android bandaids the cut from a kitchen incident on his fingers.

It's too weird.

He lets Kon dress, barely. Because when it stands there, properly clothed and looking so arrestingly human and his fingers have bandaids on them, it's just too weird.

"Kon," Shishido says. "Shut down."

 

Kon shuts down.

***

"I want to make a female," Oshitari says at work.

Shishido tries to restrain himself from throwing something pointy and possibly lethal at him. Instead he pretends to write code. He's behind on work. The drive for it is gone. Instead he thinks he'd rather be doing simple repairs or something that will allow him to move more. His body is wasting away. He plays with the idea of picking up jogging once more and maybe even attempting to excavate his tennis racket back at his folks' place.

"You know what company policy is," Yanagi says. His android's eye is dangling out of the socket, it keeps going cross-eyed and not even Niou can figure out why.

"I am well aware," Oshitari says. "Just, it is rather curious, is it not? Why should men only be allowed to build androids with a male exterior and women only those with female parts? Kite-san, what do you"- the addition of ' _and your tight purple pants_ ' here, Shishido feels, is implied -"think of it?" 

Kite looks towards him, eyebrow arching. "Because a bunch of sad bastards like you all'd probably take them for a test drive."

"I think Hanamura takes hers out for a test drive female parts notwithstanding, if ya ask me," Niou says, smirking. "Or that Oishi, you know, from first aid?" His eyebrows do a dance of innuendo. "He and his aide are awfully close."

"Their relationship is strictly professional," Inui interjects.

"Yeah, and you would know all about that sorta professional, don't ya?" Niou snickers.

Inui's glasses glint nefariously.

Shishido ducks behind his computer and pretends not to be there. He suspects a new addition to the tea by this evening, or maybe only just to Niou's cup. If they forget he's there, he might be spared.

"Shishido," Inui says.

The universe just loves proving him wrong, doesn't it?

"Yeah?" he goes, as casual as he can.

Inui smiles. Shishido doesn't like it when he does that. Last time Inui smiled at him he wound up passed out for an unknown amount of time in the lobby, during which Taki saw it fit to paint his nails pink.

"Atobe has inquired as to what your new project name will be," he informs him.

"Er," Shishido goes, rather at loss. "I dunno. Number Six?" he throws the suggestion out since the killer droid was number Five.

The silence that follows is rather pointed. Shishido peers over the edge of his screen.

"Why is it you are utterly incapable of coming up with names?" Yanagi wonders. "We all have actual names for ours. Yet yours are still just numbers."

"Well, it is the sixth one I'm making," Shishido points out.

"It might be better to think of a name for it," Yanagi presses. "If you become somewhat more attached to your work by doing so, then maybe you wouldn't be at number six while we are still working on our first."

Not even Niou has something to add to that.

Shishido bows his head, wisely clamping his lips over the rebuttal that he has finished his first android -and the only one he ever named- and has it up and running.

***

"Kon, activate."

Eyes opening, Kon says, "Good evening, Shishido-san."

"Yeah yeah," Shishido mumbles, shuffling into the kitchen and wondering why the hell he had him activate in the first place. Curling his fingers he can feel the bandaids scrunch up in his palm. The cuts throbs in thick response to his heartbeat.

"How was work?" Kon asks, trailing behind like an abnormally over-sized puppy that wants to be taken home. Or at least receive ear-scratchings.

"Same old," Shishido replies. Niou passed out in the hallway, twitching: check; Inui lurking about whilst chuckling darkly: check; Yanagi happily hammering away at his demon android: check; Hiyoshi looking martyred by them all: check; Oshitari being a pain in the ass: check. And lately this also includes Kite looking like he's either about to murder or molest you (or a little of both) whilst wearing  _tight purple pants_ : check.

The only thing that lacked was him blowing something up. Maybe he ought to have, you know, for old time's sake.

Instead he kept puttering about with his code, tennis on his mind. He suspects that if number Six does not explode or attempts to murder anybody, it might just end up pretty damn kick-ass at tennis.

"Do you think you'd play tennis, Kon?" Shishido asks, absentmindedly.

Kon hovers near the door. "I don't know," it says. "Do I?"

Touché, Shishido has to admit. "We'll have to find out, then," he answers. A plan begins to take form.

***

"Who's your tall and polite friend?" his mother asks.

Shishido roots around in the small mountain of junk he's left to gather dust.

"Some guy I know from Tannhauser," Shishido answers vaguely. "Okaa-san, where have you put my old tennis stuff?"

For all that he concocted this scheme, it is far from brilliant (no surprises there, a rather Oshitari-like voice whispers in his head). Taking your highly illegal though admittedly brilliantly crafted android out in public is a bad idea. Exposing it to your parents is an even worse one. But he felt like playing tennis and he conveniently forgot about all the rest. On top of that women are like rabid hyaenas. They can smell your fear. And dishonesty.

"Ryou," his mother sighs, nodding her chin at a rather obvious tennis racket shaped bag in the corner.

"Oh, thanks," he grunts, beginning to grin as he reaches for it. 

"Does he have a name?" she presses, "He won't say."

"Sure he does," Shishido mumbles, pointedly ignoring the fact that she'd obviously like to know what it is. "I gotta go," he says instead, leaning in and kissing her forehead, before hastily hightailing it out of his old room.

He's halfway down the stairs when she calls after: "I know you're up to something, Shishido Ryou!"

"Let's get out of here," he hisses, grabbing Kon's bicep and hauling it along. 

They don't even make it down the drive before she appears in the doorway and singsongs: "I would love it if your new friend would join us for dinner sometime soon. Very soon."

Bodily shoving Kon through the gate, Shishido curses under his breath. For all that she is a lovely little thing, his mother is possibly the single most devious creature walking the planet.

"Your mother is very nice," Kon says, lips curving.

"Not another fucking word," Shishido warns, the hair at his nape on end as his mother watches him flee.

"Hai, Shishido-san."

***

"You can talk now," Shishido snaps, annoyed at how literarily it takes his orders. 

"Thank you," Kon says, gracious and stupidly bland and empty. "Aren't we going to play tennis?"

Shishido throws himself bodily against the door before it relents with a rusty click. "It's too dark," Shishido lies. 

Okay, it is too dark and the street courts that have floodlights are too far away, but mostly he is appalled that he found it a good idea to take Kon outside and see how others would perceive him. Granted, he's pretty sure his mother doesn't truly know he saw it fit to unleash an android whose discovery might land him in jail, but she knows he did something that he shouldn't have.

On the other hand, nobody even for a moment suspected they were looking at an animated pile of electro mechanics, which goes to show how human Kon looks.

Shishido steals a glance at it. It does look like that. Human. Especially as the crisp temperature outside has brought a flush to its cheeks, the white hair disarrayed.

"Might I have a cup of water?" Kon asks suddenly.

It starts Shishido out of his meditation of it. "Water level low?" he says, handing it a mug half-filled with water from the tap.

"Yes," Kon answers, sipping tentatively. "From the walking. I haven't ever walked like that. Sweating feels odd. Should I shower now?"

Shrugging, Shishido mumbles, "If you wanna, knock yourself out. Don't drink too much water. I'd rather not open you up." 

"I won't," Kon promises and demonstratively puts aside the mug before drifting off into the bathroom.

 _Too weird_ , Shishido thinks. Almost the real thing, he'd said. Almost, Jiroh'd echoed.

But not really.

***

Of all the people he's close to (not a whole lot of those, to be honest), Jiroh is the one who arguably knows his deepest, darkest secrets. That, and he phones Shishido's mom a lot, which makes for all kinds of uncomfortable scenarios.

Such as Jiroh ringing his doorbell on a Sunday morning, just as Shishido was getting ready to go for a run.

"Gooooood morning," Jiroh says, grinning. 

Shishido raises his eyebrow at him.

"You're awake," Jiroh continues blithely. "Congratulations."

"Thank you," Shishido returns, voice like ice. He doesn't invite Jiroh inside either. "To what do I owe this dubious honor of having you ring my goddamn bell at nine in the morning on a Sunday?"

Jiroh's eyes narrow and his teeth show. "Recent contact with my sources have given me a good reason to believe you have activated your android."

"Oh my god," Shishido groans, widening the door because postponing the inevitable is useless. "She actually  _phoned_  you?"

"Yup," Jiroh goes cheerfully, squeezing through the narrow gap Shishido reluctantly made. "Apparently you showed up with an abnormally tall and kind young man in tow, looking for your tennis rackets. She seems under the impression that your new friend"- he makes air-quotations here -"is responsible for you getting somewhat of a normal life again. It gives her despairing heart hope, Ryou."

"I am sure it does," Shishido grumbles, standing back as Jiroh casts about his apartment, like a particularly determined Jack Russell looking for a bone.

When he eventually finds it, he goes "Oh Ryou," in a very, very disappointed tone. "You still throw a sheet over him? He's… he's turned off isn't he? Please tell me he is."

"Of course it's turned off, you jackass," Shishido replies. "Besides, would you like seeing a motionless humanoid thing pointed at you while you try to grab some shut-eye? I recall you were freaked out by your brother's E.T. plush, not to mention they had to take down Transformers poster because you thought Megatron would come and eat you while you slept."

"Decepticons are evil,"Jiroh answers enigmatically. Then continues in a different voice, "May I look?"

"Sure," Shishido answers and sits on his desk chair as Jiroh pulls the sheet away.

Then he simply stares for a while, standing very, very still. Shishido loses interest and wanders off to make tea, unsure what the whole big deal is. The water has just finished boiling when Jiroh joins him, leaning against the counter next to him.

"You did it," he says softly. 

"Not really," Shishido answers softly as he adds the tea leaves. "There's nothing inside but that which I programmed there to be."

The leaves release a strong grassy odor as they steep. Shishido tastes it again, that bitter aftertaste of disappointment, along with the sharp tang of green tea.

"I've never seen anything like him," Jiroh whispers. "Congratulations. He's beautiful."

"You make it sound as though I became a mother," he answers, lip curling. The idea makes him vaguely nauseous.

"Your choice of role-model, not mine," Jiroh says quickly, hands up in a 'I-know-nothing' sort of way.

That deserves an elbow nudge. A sharp one. Jiroh rubs his ribs, but grins regardless. They settle into companionable silence again.

"Isn't it a little like that?" Jiroh wonders after a while, when they are prudently nipping at their cups.

"Heh, no, not at all." Shishido answers, honest.

While he knows how Kon works, exactly, intimately and inside-out and then some, when it is activated… there's a distance. However odd that might be, but it is there and Shishido prefers it that way. It's easier to deal with, that way.

"I want to see him activated," Jiroh says. "Not right now. But soon."

Shishido thinks. Then nods, slowly.

"Alright."

***

"Kon, activate."

He's pulling his sweater over his head and re-emerges to the sight of Kon standing and stretching. It easily reaches the ceiling.

"Hi," Kon goes, bobbing his head. "How was work?"

The image of Inui standing over his activated android (codename: Viper) cackling: " _It's ALIVEEE!_ " resurfaces. He could've happily gone on without ever having to witness that. On the other hand Viper -or, as Inui revealed, Kaidoh- doesn't seem to have achieved successful and complete soul-driven AI either. That and it looks creepy.

Small mercies. 

"Nothing special," Shishido says, wondering whether he has any sort of meat to dunk in his bamboo rice.

As usual, Kon follows him.

Stands around while Shishido finds a packet of meat of unknown origin and decides to take his chances. Yet today ignoring it is hard. Especially when Kon just stands there, apparently hopeful (it isn't Shishido knows. It isn't!) and a little shy. He manages to ignore it while he cooks, but when he starts to eat and Kon perches itself as unobtrusively as an one-hundred and ninety-three centimeters tall android with white hair can be on the edge of a chair, he relents.

"Inui -he's my colleague- activated his android today," he mumbles awkwardly.

Kon's eyes snap up sharply. "Oh," it goes, intonation wavering. "What was it like?"

"Kaidoh?" Shishido snorts. "Sulky, bad-tempered. I dunno." 

Reminds me of Shishido on his better days, Oshitari has seen it fit to announce. Shishido had thrown a wrench at him.

"Kaidoh…" Kon repeats softly.

Right then and there Shishido halts his chopsticks-to-mouth motion midway. His skin crawls. The pipes click and groan. His rice steams. He stares at Kon, eyes wide.

"Is Kaidoh," Kon hesitates, swallows. "Is he official?" it adds at last.

Their eyes meet. Somehow Kon knows enough from what is plastered all over Shishido's face. Its gaze drops and it looks away.

Barely audible, it asks, "Is that why I don't have a real name?" 

His chopsticks clatter indecently loud as they hit the ground.

Kon starts and stands up so fast the chair topples back. The crash reverberates through the place. "I am sorry," it apologizes. "That was an inconsiderate question, I-I know I am not supposed to… to exist. Sorry, please, let me help-" and it crouches down to the ground to help Shishido clean the mess.

Shishido isn't so much concerned about the spilled food as he is trying to come to terms with what just happened and what it might mean. If it means anything at all. Machine learning, he decides. Of course. This isn't any indication that-

No.

It isn't.

Kon mops up rice grains, "I am sorry." it whispers yet again, sounding wretched.

Shishido shakes his head, looks at it closely.  _It isn't_ , he repeats to himself. Somehow that steadies him. "No, it's alright," he murmurs. "Don't worry. Here give me that and stand up."

Unable to resist a command from him, Kon gives the sullied cloth and stands up.

Shishido rises, too. "No, that is not the reason," he tells it. He washes his hands at the sink, before adding as casually as he can: "Would you like a name?"

Silence.

Turning, Shishido tries to keep a firm grasp on reality. Almost but not quite, he repeats to himself. It isn't. Nevertheless he's arrested by the expression he sees there.

They just look at one another for several minutes. 

"A real name?" Kon asks, voice small.

He nods.

A knife-sharp intake. Blinking furiously Kon nods, too, once and shaky. "Yes. I'd like that," it breathes. 

Shishido smiles, pats its arm awkwardly. "We'll think of one tomorrow, okay? It's getting kinda late."

That seems to rouse it. "Of course!" it gushes. "Sorry, I forget you need sleep."

Knowing the routine, it walks towards the corner of the room and sits down. It looks eager and happy. Like a neglected child receiving a sweet.

Something twists, sharp and acute inside of him.

It isn't, he tells himself harshly.  _It isn't_.

"Kon-" he begins, authoritative.

But the android interrupts, looking up at him. "Thank you," it says, voice reverent.

Jiroh was right. It shouldn't have been activated. Ever.

"-shut down." he finishes.

 

Kon shuts down.

***

He leaves Kon deactivated for a week first, then two.

Three.

He goes to work and pretends to be busy. Oshitari seems to suspect he isn't. Takes a Master at slacking off to recognize the feeble crumbling of resistance to its flighty seduction in another.

Witnesses Yanagi activate his android. It spurts into life cackling, eyes flooding red and hair wild. It gets shut down right after. Kite seemed disappointed he didn't get to shoot it.

Shishido takes up jogging again. Hates himself when he all but collapses on his first try, disgusted that he's let himself become so much as useless pudding. The very same day he joins the gym and starts doing sit-ups and push-ups.

There's inquiring noises from Jiroh as they eat at Tensai Tarts. Shishido ignores them and challenges him to a game of tennis instead.

He loses 0-6.

So he asks it again the next day. And the day after that, too. And the day after… and after.

A month passes. 

There's a layer of dust on the sheet. It piles up in the hollows and Shishido sees the crude shadowing of skull in it, when his eyes pass over it too fast, or when he tries to sleep.

He goes to work and he pretends.

Atobe asks what his progress is.

Shishido looks at all the lines of code he's written and feels ill.

There's only one word written there, over and over.

A name.

***

His palms are moist.

Shishido doesn't understand why, but he's frightened of it. Yet he also wants to, needs to, a compulsion that he can't quite resist, longs to see it activated, hear it talk.

Wonders whether it will recognize him now. He changed. Strong, healthy. Too skinny by far, worse than before, but what remains is mostly muscle and tendons. His skin glows and he finished against Jiroh in a 3-6 game yesterday.

He feels both more alive and less connected, less real and less himself than he has in ages. 

Dammit.

" _It isn't_ ," Shishido whispers to himself.

Breathes in.

And out.

"Kon…" he starts, then pauses and corrects deliberately, speaking with great care as though his hands are holding something fragile: 

"Choutarou, activate."

He hasn't removed the sheet. There's some struggling and coughing as it gets tangled in it, dislodging a month's worth of dust. When they manage to remove it, its fair hair stands on end.

"Shishido-san," it says, voice flush with pleased surprise. "I-"

He interrupts it. "Like it? Is that- is it okay?" Stops, cross with his stupid mumbling. Then adds rather harshly, "Your name."

"My name," it repeats. 

The smile that spreads is instantaneous and blinding. Shishido flinches away like a spooked horse.

His heart ceased beating right there and then. It hurts.

"My name."

Despite that, despite Shishido thinking wildly: ' _I've lost it!_ ' they look at one other.

"Choutarou." 

Shishido nods, weakly. He has no words. 

"I like it," Choutarou says.

 

Then  _he_  smiles.

***

Carefully avoiding looking at it for just yet, Shishido raps his knuckles against the doorframe.

Oishi looks up, mind clearly still preoccupied until he sees Shishido standing there. "Shishido!" he exclaims, smile wide and inviting. "Haven't seen you in a while. You look good. Much better than you haven been for a while. Bit tired though, how have you been sleeping?"

 _Not at all_ , Shishido thinks darkly. To Oishi he says: "Poorly."

Oishi advances on him, full of doctor-like intentions, then falters when he sees the look in his eyes. "What's wrong?" he asks, worried.

Now Shishido forces himself to look at  _it_.

Breathes in, jaw clenching. Corrects himself.

Look at  _him_.

"I need to look at Eiji," he says, voice soft.

Eiji looks back, steady.

"Alright," he says.

***

Shishido feels for the first time in his life horridly uncomfortable in his own damn house. He's lived in his trusty shoebox for years, but now he's acutely aware that it is -literally- not much larger than just that.

Especially with not only him (and Choutarou's carefully hidden and inert form in the corner, under a pile of everything he owns), but also Eiji and Oishi shuffling inside.

Eiji knocks a cup from the table. 

It falls and Shishido braces himself for the smashing finality when the porcelain'll meet the ground.

"I don't think so!" Eiji says, moving so fast it's unbelievable, a roll and a shimmy as he catches the cup before it is even half-way. He stands up and sticks his tongue out at it, "Neh-neh!" 

Oishi gives Shishido an apologetic look. 

Pretending not to see the horrible fondness in those dark eyes, Shishido clears his throat and says: "Glad to see you're putting Oshitari's skeleton to good use."

Silence.

Eiji frowns at him. Oishi looks as though he'd like to, but forgives Shishido because idiocy is something you're born with and are unable to help having. 

Alright. Not the smoothest conversation starter he's ever thrown out there. Running a hand through his hair and wincing, he mutters something about making tea and escapes into the kitchen.

Back in the other room, he can hear Eiji mutter, "How rude!"

When he re-enters, he tries again. "Here," he says, handing Oishi tea. Then, to Eiji he adds, "Cup of water?"

Eiji tilts his head, considering.

"A little bit," he admits after a moment. "Because I wanna be polite."

"Er," Shishido goes.

"Unlike some," Eiji adds under his breath.

"Eiji!" Oishi reprimands him, but mostly out of principle.

"What?" he counters. "He doesn't ask  _you_  what color underwear you're wearing, does he? Che!"

"I'm sorry about that, alright?" Shishido says, not meaning it much but wanting to soothe the snippy android's frazzled contacts. "Besides, it's true."

Eiji purses his lips, then nods, reluctantly.

Shishido nods also and then lowers himself to the ground, cross-legged. It annoys him a little that they hesitate to follow suit, mostly because the lack of a couch has never made him self-conscious before. Once on the ground, Shishido hooks Eiji up to his laptop. It is clear that this causes more discomfort to Oishi than it does to Eiji.

Not hard to guess why. 

Eiji still looks human and for intents and purposes he  _is_ , somehow inside there, for inexplicable reasons Shishido is attempting to find out. But when he sits there, the hatch in his chest wide open and a couple of cables stuffed in there… it serves as rather painful reality-check. Admittedly, Shishido has to concede being impressed by Oishi's nerve. It's clear the sight of it has him more than just a little uneasy, but he watches. Makes himself to.

"Tell me if it feels weird or hurts," Shishido murmurs.

"Sure," Eiji says. 

Shishido has to admire that also. His confidence even now, chest laid open, hooked up and ready to have his code downloaded. No shame.

"Don't you need to check the drive in his…" Oishi swallows, "head?"

Grinning a little wryly, he mutters, "Seeing as you don't like me popping open his chest, I think you would like it even less if I opened his skull. Besides -thanks Eiji- he is cooperating beautifully. He's already put me through."

"This is weird," Oishi says.

Shishido scrolls through the code. No major changes. Then again, someone like Inui or Yanagi might have better luck on this front. Oshitari even. It looks okay to him, but he just hasn't got what it takes to really know what to look for. Not without conducting nearly a decade of research as he did for Kon.

Choutarou.

"Eiji?" Shishido murmurs, "May I have access to your heart-drive?"

They look at each other. Eiji's eyes are large and wide, delicately lashed. 

"Sure," Eiji says again.

Oishi stands up and moves to busy himself in the kitchen. With him out of the way, Shishido pretends to lean close on pretext of peering at something, while he murmurs. "Can you remember?"

Inside of the robot, a small led light flickers rhythmically. The synthetic lungs inflate and deflate, everything moves and works, repeating endless cycles to provide him with energy and support.

Head tilting towards him, Eiji whispers, "They shut me down for the night. Approximately fifty-three days ago. And I dreamed."

Shishido's heart hammers urgently. "What did you dream of?" he asks.

"Oishi," Eiji answers. "I dreamt of Oishi." 

This is too much. Too private. Shishido casts his eyes down, to his hands.

"What will I see when I look at your heart-drive, Eiji?" he whispers. 

"Me." 

He nods and reaches inside. He could press that button. The final shut-down. He could reach in and grab, hard, then pull even harder. All he does is disconnect the cables, as careful as he can. Closes the hatch and then watches as all traces of its existence melt away.

"What about my heart-drive?" the android asks, a little anxiously.

Rolling the cables, Shishido answers with a slight smirk: "Looks just fine to me."

Oishi clatters about with pots and knives in the kitchen, while Shishido and Eiji share a secret smile.

"Thank you," Eiji says.

Standing up, Shishido grins and offers a hand. Eiji takes it and gets hauled to his feet. "No problem."

Shishido feels really good and noble about himself for about two hours. He helps Oishi devour the food he cooked with the limited supplies his fridge relinquished, chatting amicably. He finds himself liking Eiji, like you like another person. Someone who you might call a friend someday. That is until -just as they are preparing to leave- he goes "What a mess," and tweaks one corner of the slew of clothes and other objects covering Choutarou, dislodging them all in one go.

Shishido can only close his eyes, virtuously trying  _not_  to berate himself for not bashing Eiji's heart drive to smithereens when he had the chance, while the other two stare at the android curled up in the corner. It does not take a mastermind to figure out that said android is not supposed to be there.

"Oops," Eiji goes, chuckling nervously and biting his lip.

Oishi looks at him. "Oh, Shishido," he says.

***

"They won't tell about me, will they?" Choutarou asks. The wind buffets his hair in all directions.

Unlike Shishido, whose default look is rather as though he just rolled out of bed and into his clothes (which is exactly the case most of the time), Choutarou's hair looks outright disastrous. Rain and wind and cold make him look as though he's got a Brillo pad taped to his head.

Shishido swings his racket, slowly, demonstratively.

Choutarou mimics it. 

"They won't," Shishido assures him. After all if Oishi tells on him owning an illegal android, Shishido'll tell about the person that lives inside his android aide, the person he didn't inform the company about. Also, it's  _Oishi_. That alone makes Shishido rather confident his secret is safe, even if Eiji hadn't been Eiji. 

Again, he swings his racket, demonstrating how to hit a serve. "You got that? Wait, no- your hand ought to be- ah."

He'd rather not come so close, let alone touch him, moving those hands for him and guiding him through the movements. But he'd also rather not tell Choutarou about Eiji and his soul. Shishido has no doubts about, not when he still isn't completely sure about what exactly Choutarou has.

Especially not when the idea of Choutarou having  _something_  frightens him like the monster in the closet frightens small children. 

His spine aches with the need to bolt when Choutarou says: "Like this?" moving his arms himself, but with Shishido's hands cupped over his to show.

"Well done," Shishido says, withdrawing as soon as they have gone through the sequence. His skin burns and tingles. 

For all that can be said for Eiji's inner humanity, Choutarou still feels more like one. Even Shishido can't tell the difference. Mostly because Choutarou has more physical flaws, unlike Eiji, who is still a little too perfect. No unevenness, smooth, flawless skin, perfectly symmetrical.

When he touches Choutarou, the texture of his skin varies. Like just now, the backs of his hands rougher against his palms, but where their cheeks rubbed only softness and warmth. Neither is he perfectly symmetrical. Shishido knows he isn't, because he built him not to be.

Eiji still is.

To see him learn this,  _tennis_ , with the unnatural capacity of a super-computer… it ought to smash that illusion, but it doesn't. Nobody should be able to hit serves at such a speed, a physics defying speed, but when Choutarou does it, leaving Shishido standing there with his jaw dangling, but then smiles -and fist pumps!- well, what isn't painfully human about that?

"Should I hit a little slower for you, Shishido-san?" he calls, hand cupping around his mouth lest the wind blows his words away.

Shishido is briefly tempted to march over there and smack him around the ears for his cheek, but he loves challenges and faced with one so honest and simple like this? Yeah.

"No fucking chance, Choutarou!" he yells back, grinning.

It kinda sucks that Choutarou learns like a computer does: instant, hard facts, which -like a computer- he links flawlessly to only that which is required. Shishido only needs to grunt his way through a smash once, which Choutarou sees, registers and copy/pastes almost instantly, only ten times more effective. 

It annoys Shishido, because who can win against something not only intellectually but also physically superior?

So he's losing, and badly, against something that plays tennis for the first time and he hates it, resents it and  _fights_  it.

With all his considerable determination backing it up.

And somehow, sometime during their 2-5 score Shishido starts to gain, teeth bared and eyes blazing.

His blood pumps like liquid hot fire through him and his breath is expelled in harsh pants. Each time his racket connects with the ball, the impact shoots up his arm and his racket sings sweetly as he angles, creating more spin.

Before Kon -Choutarou-, his passion was tennis. In his wildest dreams he'd become a famous player, conquer the world. He was never interested in computer sciences besides the fact that cool games somehow tied into that. But then he thought of Kon, dreamed up his concept and everything from then on, his energy and will and drive and all he was, was poured into creating him.

And yet here he is. They are, playing as though their lives depend on it and Shishido never has to question whether the fierce joy he sees in Choutarou's eyes is something he programmed.

He might've put it there, but not by typing lines of code.

The ball sings and it starts to rain. Shishido's sweats freely, for all his working out he's not pushed himself like this, hasn't found anything worth pushing himself so far for.

He dashes up to the net and uses his rising - so simple, really- and scores the last point.

It took his all and he hasn't moved like this in ages, smoother and cleaner and with that edge, that very last extra and he won, in the end, but he had to fight for it with everything in him. He feels so good.

So alive.

Himself, more than ever.

Shishido laughs, free and up to the skies. It starts to pour, cool drops splattering on his face. He breathes, tastes the beginning storm on his lips. And when he praises Choutarou, the other grins back at him, as flushed and proud as a thirteen year old boy.

They walk up to the net to shake. He feels a man's hand in his: broad and strong, with long, nimble fingers tickling at his wrist.

"Good game," he says, between pants. His heart races, pumping blood faithfully. It beats like a too-large butterfly near his breastbone, meaty wings batting about.

Choutarou smiles back, rather fiercely himself. "I'll beat you," he says. 

"But not today," Shishido counters.

"Not today," Choutarou echoes.

They pack up with the rain starting to pour. It ought to feel cold, but Shishido seems to burn from the inside out, body still working to manage the strain of the game.

Purely accidentally, Choutarou and he reach for the bag with their gear at the same time. They knock heads (which really hurts, cause Choutarou's skull is about as hard a steel), but Choutarou also bumps into his chest.

"Sorry," Shishido mumbles, distracted.

But Choutarou flinches, hard and wild. His eyes are round and shocked as he gapes at Shishido -not at his face but lower. A hand comes up to grip the soaked fabric clinging to his chest, squeezing convulsively until the rain dribbles from between his fingers. His hair sticks in pewter-hued loops to his forehead, eyes haunted like shadows.

"You okay?" he asks, worried.

"I'm… fine." Choutarou manages, still staring at whatever it is below his face. 

"Alright," Shishido agrees, voice skeptical. "Lets head back, huh?"

"Home," Choutarou says.

Still treading on clouds, Shishido just grins and says, "Yeah."


	3. Part 3

It's a Monday morning and Shishido is feeling exceedingly enthusiastic at the prospect of a whole week of doing something he has no interest in any longer. So he's grumpy, but also experiencing a sort of lingering elation due to yesterday's game. It's weird, as though there's an electrically charged shiver swooping in and out of his belly.

He has no idea what his face can possibly show but for his default Monday morning scowl (deluxe edition), yet somehow when Oshitari joins him at the elevator he takes one and only one look at him.

And starts to smile.

Shishido wonders if hitting Oshitari simply on premise that he knows, just  _knows_ , that whatever he has yet to say will piss him off is acceptable. He never gets the chance to find out.

The elevator dings. Oshitari says, loudly: "You got laid, didn't you?" just as the doors open to reveal Sanada standing there, looking very unhappy indeed.

"Tarundoru," he says. His hand twitches as though he longs so slap them. 

Shishido doesn't doubt for a moment that he heard every single word.

"Ah, Sanada," Oshitari says. "Good morning to you." He gets inside.

After a moment of swallowing down the urge to shove Oshitari's stupid briefcase down his throat, as well as his own helmet and any other object within grabbing range, Shishido stomps inside as well. Oshitari smiles at him in that way he has, lips curved but rather the evil, perverted twin of a smile, more as if only he knows something the rest of the world doesn't and it amuses him endlessly.

"Where's your tie, Shishido?" Sanada asks after exactly ten seconds.

"It is in the laundry, sir," Shishido manages, carefully avoiding those eyes.

"You own only one tie?" Sanada demands.

"Uhm," Shishido goes.

"All others were lost in an unfortunate incident that involved Kite-san"- the gleam on his glasses just scream ' _and his tight purple pants_ '  -"and as of yet have not been recovered. We are still working on it, sir," Oshitari interjects smoothly.

Sanada's fingers twitch again. This time Shishido suspects it's not so much as slapping as it is blowing Oshitari's brains out of the back of his head. Their lives are possibly spared only because the elevator dings and Sanada gets out, fuming.

When the doors are shut and they ascend further, Shishido hisses, "I hate you."

Oshitari nods, complacently. "Niou and I suspect Sanada is an android himself," he just says, deaf (or uncaring) to any and all declarations of intense dislike.

"It would explain a lot," Shishido concedes.

"Niou even theorizes he answers to…" he pauses for added effect. " _Yukimura_."

"Oh fuck, that again? There is no Yukimura. It's just something Yanagi made up to freak us out," Shishido tells him. "The only Yukimura I know of is that tennis player."

"What if they are the same person?" Oshitari counters.

Taking a steadying breath, Shishido repeats, voice final: "I don't know what you and Niou were doing in Atobe's office and why you cracked his computer or even how you got past Kabaji, and I don't wanna know. But this ridiculous notion that this company is controlled by some Yukimura who has us building AI-driven tennis-playing androids to take over the world is stupid." He rolls his eyes. "This is not some sort of anime series, Oshitari. Get a grip."

"Nothing is impossible," Oshitari says, enigmatically. 

"You're all crazy," Shishido says, shaking his head sadly. Even he and his illegal android can't top this.

This makes him wonder how Choutarou is holding up, all by himself. This morning Shishido activated him and let him stay like that while he went to work. It no longer feels right to keep him covered under a sheet, inert and still, like something indecent.

He stops wondering, or even caring, when the doors open for their floor, revealing utmost chaos inside. Parts and tools fly overhead and there are gunshots.

Yanagi screams: "Don't shoot him, idiots!"

Shishido ducks a mechanical arm flying their way and Oshitari flattens himself to the side of the elevator.

"Looks like they activated Kirihara again," he mumbles, sounding almost bored.

"Kirihara-kun still needs tweaking," a voice says right outside the elevator.

"And Yagyuu, too." Oshitari adds, now sounding halfway interested. "Big day today."

Niou joins them, twirling a screwdriver like a baton. He puts an arm around Yagyuu's shoulder, teeth flashing white. "Well, whadya think, huh? Stayed the whole weekend to finish him up, ne, Yaaaaaagyuu?"

"Why is he wearing glasses?" Shishido asks, incredulous.

"Because it is sophisticated," Oshitari provides. "And sexy."

Niou just grins and pats Yagyuu's cheek affectionately. Yagyuu purses his lips.

"You've got some catching up to do, Ryou," Oshitari says, voice carefully empty. "I’m re-booting Gakuto tomorrow having finished upgrading him. We'll all have reached the final stage for this project."

Oshitari looks at him.

Shishido looks back. Swallows thickly. 

Niou watches them curiously.

"Atobe will need to know how far you've progressed," Oshitari says, slowly enunciating each word. Just when Shishido thinks that this is it, that the cold finger he just felt piercing the base of his spine was all in his head and he starts to breathe, Oshitari adds:

"Better be careful."

***

He's still unnerved when he comes home.

 _Was that a warning?_  Shishido asks himself, as he rams bodily against the door to open it.  _But how can Oshitari know?_

The place is in shadows, but for the bright square his laptop makes. On his belly, stretched out on his futon and chin resting on his crossed arms, is Choutarou, eyes intent on whatever it is he's reading. When Shishido slips inside, his head jerks towards him instantly.

"Shishido-san," he says, climbing to his feet almost self-consciously. "Hi."

"Hey," Shishido murmurs, trying to shake it off. "How was your day?"

Choutarou looks startled, but indecently happy to be on the receiving end of that question. "Alright. I read a lot today. And- and yours?" he adds, almost shyly.

"Honestly?" Shishido says, more to himself than to Choutarou. "Not sure."

"Has something bad happened?" Choutarou asks, worriedly. 

"Not yet," Shishido mutters. Then says more loudly, "Don't worry about it. What are you reading?" he asks instead, crouching by the laptop and tipping the screen back to look at it. "Anything goo-" he sees and falters, the blood draining from his face, lips parted.

There's a video on pause. 

It shows, quite clearly, someone cut open.

Intestines gleam, purple and red. Something bulbous is bared, pink and whitish in places, dark in others. Something unnatural is pointed at it. Something sharp.

For the first time since the day he activated him, Shishido thinks about number Five and the glaring lack of a crowbar in his hands.

"It's not what it looks like," Choutarou says quickly, so hurriedly and thick the words form a fumbling string. "It looks bad, but… here, let me show you-"

He flinches when Choutarou's shoulder brushes his and, in response to his obvious repulsion, Choutarou winces. They don't look at each other when he kneels before the laptop and clicks start.

For an instant Shishido's stomach heaves violently, but as soon as he thinks he's about to be sick, Choutarou garbs his hand urgently and says, "Look."

He looks then, properly, and gets it. The bloated thing pumps and a gloved hand appears, wielding tweezers. It's an open heart-surgery.

Shishido expels an exhale he didn't know he was holding. His own heart gallops in response. Then he laughs, somewhat sheepishly, but mostly relieved. No killer droids here. Cold sweat dribbles down his temple.

"Sorry," Choutarou says. "I didn't mean to scare you."

They laugh, together, embarrassed and still somewhat nervous.

Shishido sits down properly. "Why the hell are you looking at that? It's freaky as hell."

On the clip, the surgeon kind of casually grabs the heart, turns it this way and that, examining it. The organ flops about, pulsing cheerfully away. There's no sound accompanying it and this lack enhances the deep, personal silence that follows his question.

Tearing his eyes away from the screen he looks at Choutarou instead, only to find his eyes already on him.

"I-" he says on an inhale, but the sound dribbles away. His large, slender hands move restlessly. Though his lips are still parted, nothing else is forthcoming. Then he looks away, self-conscious. The darkness of the room hides his expression.

Shishido frowns a little. "Hey," he prompts, dipping his head to catch his gaze again.

When their eyes meet again Shishido becomes acutely aware of how close they are and that Choutarou is warm and that the room is dark. 

Lifting his hand slowly, exaggerating the movement so that Shishido might catch it in time, Choutarou leans in, expression solemn. His arms comes up, palm of his hand bare and pointed at him. Which closes in.

Touches him.

They have touched before, accidentally and not so, sometimes deliberately personal gestures such as a handshake over the net. 

But never like this. Shishido is as still as he knows to be, confused and feeling… odd, as though absolutely terrified but not. Even though there's a hand pressed flush and steady against the left side of chest and there's a naked, slightly bloody and gross-looking heart on the screen.

It's hard to believe that the convulsing mass of muscle in the surgeon's hand is something he has, too, beating just as violently inside of him. Hard enough that Choutarou can feel it, against the warmth of his palm.

"Choutarou…" he manages, voice choked.

As though his speaking means he has to, too, Choutarou manages a forced: "I, ah, I like how it feels."

Shishido breathes in and holds it, as if it might dispel his sudden flushed cheeks.

"And how it goes faster," the android murmurs, smiling rather sadly. "I don't-"

"I'm-" Shishido starts, voice rough.

"No, it's okay." Choutarou shushes him. "I know why."

They're both still then and it is so, so, so very awkward and Shishido kinda wishes he were anywhere else than here, because he's embarrassed and it makes his heart hammer even faster. Yet he can't make himself pull away, break the contact, not when Choutarou sits there, eyes closed and smiling.

He doesn't know how long they sit there. His heart speeds up until he can feel the tang of it in his throat, but then it slows down again. The clip ends and the laptop switches to the screensaver and finally into sleep-mode, casting the room in complete darkness. Shishido's knees begin to ache and then to hurt. He begins to grow cold and shivers. 

They sit deep into the night.

They sit until Shishido can wet his mouth long enough to whisper, apologetic:

"Choutarou, shut down."

 

Choutarou shuts down.

***

Jiroh likes Choutarou.

Instantly and completely. 

He's not even awkward when they go outside, all three of them. Shishido had him activated when he stopped by, figuring it was easier to see Choutarou animated and about, instead of having to witness an empty hull start to move.

Only that he isn't empty, Shishido knows now.

He thinks of the others and their androids, how they have the same coldness Choutarou had in the beginning, how they speak without true emotional awareness and just relay hollow, intellectual facts. He wonders whether they are different, and how, or that they, too, will be able to smile like Choutarou does, or look with that particular wild freedom when they enjoy something.

He thinks of what Oshitari said and how Atobe came to him just yesterday and inquired about his progress. Left after reprimanding the lack of any sort of productivity at all. Maybe Oshitari wasn't implying anything at all. Maybe he was just paranoid because every single part of Choutarou is… does not belong to him and that he's just as guilty of hiding vital information as Oishi is.

Without noticing Shishido's urge to milk well-deserved fame out of his years long research, not to mention to be the first to cement his name into history as the first to manage true AI, or even beyond that -a godlike ability to create a soul… it ceased to matter. The idea that someone might pry Choutarou open, even to look, it is repulsive and frightens him just as much as Choutarou himself sometimes does.

As Oishi said, what if they damage… hurt  _him_?

Sitting on the bench, he re-tapes his racket while Choutarou and Jiroh play a game. 

The weather is mild. Spring arrives in a budding of leaves and blossoms. Sakura flowers weight down branches. Strong gusts of wind dislodge small flurries of them. They get caught in his hair, delicate pink shells contrasting against the dark shining mess.  

Choutarou brushes them away, smiling faintly, fingertips lightly combing them out so that they dust his shoulders and the collar of his shirt instead.

Stretched out on the bench, Jiroh sleeps. Or pretends to.

His dreams seem to worry him.

***

Evenings are filled with the sleepy glow of the sun as it dips below the horizon. 

Shishido becomes used to coming home to a place with someone waiting for him. Someone unfailingly pleased to see him. They even have a routine. When he wakes up in the morning, alarm blaring rowdy rock music, Shishido's first words will serve to activate Choutarou, voice often gritty with sleep. He'll wash and dress and make feeble attempts at looking halfway like the professional computer scientist he's supposed to be, while Choutarou makes tea for him. Then he'll be bullied into eating a double serving of his breakfast. Always he only leaves when already running late, often getting the forgotten motorcycle helmet until it’s pushed into his hands.

He works, now having started on building the android, while his colleagues run numerous tests on their activated ones. The general spirit is one of unspoken disappointment. Shishido is familiar with the bitterness of it and is unable to keep up his inner smugness.

He comes home to Choutarou and takes care of a few things before heading out for his jog. On Wednesdays and Fridays he goes to the gym. After that, every evening they make dinner. Choutarou helps, fascinated, often with a box of bandaids nearby. Shishido finds himself covered in the stupid things, on his knees, arms, eyebrow and cheek, wherever he manages to burst open his skin. Funny how he never realized how much that happens. He laughs at Choutarou for being so mothering and Choutarou'll point out he ought to be less careless.

Dinner is filled with small talk, mostly Choutarou asking him things, endlessly, almost starved for information. More often than not he'll plead for Shishido to describe how whatever he is eating tastes and in great detail, please. Or the difference between sunrise and sunset, because it is hard to see from the window or how the ocean smells or even mown grass. What about hay? Roses? How does the hair of a rabbit feel? Is it different from a cat? He managed to pet one, yesterday, when it hopped from a story higher onto their windowsill.

When Shishido can, he'll provide actual evidence of his answers. Some are easier than others. He steals a rose from the vase on Taki's desk after work one day and has to put up with Choutarou smelling it all evening, exclaiming at the soft velvety petals, the sharp thorns and then his sulkiness when the flower falls apart due to being handled for hours on end. They watch clips for a whole week, countless sunrises and sunsets, during all sorts of weather circumstances and all over the world.

Coming home one day, Shishido finds the place strewn with paper and Choutarou frustrated that the only things he could find was a pencil and a green felt-tip pen and who doesn't have even so much as a red one, anyway, comes the sulky muttering. 

So he goes out, fed up and not a little annoyed that every single slip of paper -even the back of his overdue bills- have black and white sunsets and sunrises on them. But he comes home with a sketchbook and some sort of paint he let the shop girl fob on him, the confused man in the store knowing jack shit about art. 

Next day the place is  _still_  covered completely in sunsets and sunrises -now in color.

He can't even manage a scowl when he's completely flabbergasted at how  _well_  they're drawn.

Evenings are spent watching series on Shishido's laptop or whatever it might be that Choutarou has questioned him about during dinner, sometimes in companionable silence, sometimes with the sounds of pencils and brushes skritching away in the background.

One day he catches himself being… content. Happy even, yes. It's strange and new and he's unsure how to handle it.

Only one thing bothers Shishido.

Every evening he has to shut Choutarou down and ask himself how much of his life still counts as reality.

***

"Tadaima," he calls out as he kicks off his shoes.

For the first time in weeks, there's no response. Eyebrows knitting together, Shishido fumbles his helmet of to the side, throws his jacket over it. Pulls at his collar to air his damp body. It's getting hotter daily. At work the fans are already blowing. Kirihara and Gakuto (and Niou) spent all day sitting before them making odd noises.

There's no response, but it's hardly quiet.

Shishido halts, frowning more in confusion now. 

Music plays. 

The kind he, yeah okay, knows exists, but can't be bothered to acknowledge. 

The classical kind.

"What the-" slowly he ventures further into the room. 

For the first time he's struck by how  _bare_  his place is. The futon, a low table and an overloaded desk. A makeshift rail that has clothes dangling from mismatched hangers. Maybe it is because of the rich tide of instrumental harmony that this bothers him so, striking discordantly with its fullness against the emptiness of the apartment.

Choutarou's back is rigid. His eyes are fastened on the screen. For an instant the fierceness of his expression reminds Shishido of a hawk trained on a hare, wild and deadly and utterly wonderful.

Only when the knees of his jeans brush against Choutarou's back, does the other shake himself free of his spellbound fascination. Carefully, Shishido lowers himself down, their legs pressed together. "What's this?" he asks.

Choutarou smiles bright and ecstatic but dazed most of all. His pupils are dilated. If Shishido didn't know any better he'd suspect him from sniffing stuff that is about as legal as he himself is.

"It's Beethoven," he whispers, worshipfully.

"I've heard about that dude. He's kinda dead and all." Shishido admits. "So?"

There's some rather highly offended spluttering. Almost like that time he only found a green pen when he wanted a red one (many sorts of red ones, at that), only this rather brings to mind an old lady confronted with highly inappropriate behavior and frilly underwear. 

"Listen!" he commands, grabbing Shishido's shoulder and gesturing wildly, as though it magically might make Shishido understand.

He tries, but it really isn't his thing. Frivolous, but that isn't right. Like a particularly boring tea party full of ladies wearing lacy dresses and wielding parasols, tittering over small snacks amongst which there are no cheese sandwiches. 

But Choutarou is riveted. Every single part of his being is drawn into absorbing the sounds. 

So Shishido ends up watching him watch something that cannot be seen, until the music comes to an end. Leaving an almost reverent silence before he speaks, Choutarou says: "It's the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major."

Nodding -even though Choutarou might be speaking Swahili for all he understood of that gobbledygook- Shishido just kinda stares, wondering if anything is expected of him now. Like applause. Or intelligent conversation.

Silence. 

Eventually Shishido mumbles, feeling as though he just came up short, "I don't know anything about this kinda stuff, Choutarou," he admits, then shrugs a little helplessly.

"That's okay!" Choutarou hastens to assure him. "That's okay. It's just… it's so  _beautiful_. I didn't know anything could sound like that."

He smiles, dreamily.

Then he goes to add, new to Shishido not knowing anything about something for the first time, "The violins. I like them the most. They even… they even look beautiful. I searched on the internet. So small and still they can make… well-" he touches the laptop, but Shishido knows it's more than that.

***

After a goddamn week of Beethoven's 7th Opus or whatever the hell, Choutarou moves on. Vivaldi. Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Paganini. Some guy's name Shishido can't even remember, let alone pronounce.

When he isn't listening to it -on the third constructive evening Shishido pushed headphones into his hands and commanded him to use 'em, half-crazed, Choutarou hums the melodies. Under the shower (which he doesn't need to take as regularly as a human, but does anyway cause he likes how the water feels), when he makes tea, or draws (now often suspiciously violin-shaped creations). All the damn time.

Yet somehow Shishido can appreciate that more than a whole evening of symphonies playing out loud, or even filtering through the headphones. Choutarou has a nice voice and when he hums, classical music though it may be, amd he kinda likes it.

Sorta like he doesn't really care much at all for art, but rather loves going through the rapidly piling up sketchbooks when Choutarou is shut down.

It gives him an idea.

A crazy idea.

But one of his better ones, he hopes.

***

Shishido buys stuff, sure. He's gotta eat and after a while his clothes get so hideous Jiroh will simply throw them out of the window when he gets fed up.

And he pays his bills when he remembers them (or hasn't lost them, though now less so with Choutarou keeping track of these things).

At the end of the month he gets his paycheck. Yes, he knows that he gets a fairly good wage. It's not that he's selling ice-cream cones for a living. He's gone to university and was lucky enough to have been on the tennis team with Atobe when they were teenagers. He's not the best and arguably doesn't really deserve to get paid what he does, but the fact remains that he  _does_  get paid -and gets paid by Atobe Keigo.

A lot things can be said of Atobe, Shishido could write a novel on all his shortcomings if asked to, but he's not stingy. At all.

He's perfectly aware of this.

Yet when he checks his bank account for the first time in… well, months (years?), he stands there clutching the small counter of the cash machine in the bank terminal, faint.

When his paycheck first came in, Shishido calculated what his living expenses were. Even then he had a considerable margin to spare, because he was all by himself and lived in the same tiny, cramped place he had shacked up in as a poor student. In all honestly he just kept living like that poor student. He was obsessed with an android he was putting together and didn't have much interest in anything else. Even tennis dwindled into non-being.

That and his idea of a 'lavish meal' was a cheese sandwich at Tensai Tarts.

But years have passed and while he might sometimes have indulged in occasional splurges (such as his motorcycle), the margin he had kept stacking up, saving money while he never thought of it like that. But he's gotten a raise, too. And Atobe habitually raises the index a little some at the end of every year on top of that.

"I'm fucking rich," Shishido mutters to himself, disbelieving. 

And here he was, at the bank, intending to inquire about taking a loan.

***

Choutarou has made him feel a lot of things.

Disappointment.

Bitterness.

Obsession.

Ambition.

Fear.

But also good things. Especially lately.

Wonder.

Accomplishment.

Curiosity.

Determination. 

Joy.

And now nervousness. Alright, he's felt that before around him, but not like he does now. Not with his palms sweating and his mouth dry and his heart hammering and realizing that if he really has gone crazy, he's gone good.

Kinda like sometimes he still feels these stabs of irrational fear around him, the kind that leaves him weak-kneed and useless, wanting to whine like a wet, beaten dog, shivering and submissive. As though he receives a kick when already down.

Why he still has those moments, he can't explain. Because Choutarou has never, ever done anything to harm him. On the contrary, most of what he does and says is to please Shishido, to help him, to take care for him.

He does.

He knows -yes, he does, he hasn't forgotten, he's not dumb- what Choutarou is. Every night when he shuts him down Shishido is reminded of this, horribly. But he knows that Choutarou  _is_ , more so or even truer than Eiji.

So maybe this makes sense, after all.

He hopes.

Taking a deep breath, Shishido slams into the door to get it to yield, shifting his burden away from the impact. He falls half inside. 

"Ta-" he stumbles over a pair of his own trainers. "Tadaima," he finishes, feeling as though his never so grand entrance is even more lame than usual.

"Okaeri," Choutarou answers. 

There's paint on his cheek. He turns towards him and smiles.

Shishido twitches a smile back.

It's warm today. They got Choutarou new clothes, suited for the season. Together. They went shopping together. Had something to eat after (well, Shishido did) sitting on a bench in the park. Part of him knows he has to be careful, but he feels bad locking Choutarou away from the world when he is so curious about it. Besides, the glow that had clung to him for days after, the wonder at experiencing all that stuff instead of reading it, well, that had been  _damn_ worth it.

Choutarou is wearing the white button-up shirt and jeans from that haul and he's barefoot. His hair curls a little, evidence of another needless shower. The light from the sun -warm as it sets, like Choutarou has re-created over and over again in numerous paintings and drawings- hits his eyes and they shine. 

To Shishido, he's never been more human than right there and then.

It's easier than he thought to hand over the atrociously wrapped gift. He's never been good at that kinda stuff. It ought to look a rectangle, but right now it resembles something that has been hit by a truck one or twice. The bow droops, nearly flaking off. Make that thrice. It's the thought that counts, right?

Choutarou takes it, of course he does when Shishido offers him something, but then he sorta stands there, at loss. Unsure what he's meant to do with it.

"It's a gift," Shishido tells him.

Lips part. Choutarou blinks and stares at the package as though he's holding a three-headed platypus. Doesn't move.

Shishido sighs, "You're supposed to open it, baka."

As still as though hewn out of stone, Choutarou's voice carries wavering through the room when he asks, "Is it my birthday?" as soon as the last word hangs between them he winces. "I know-" he follows up hastily, "I know I don't have… that I'm not. Not like that, but. Well, kinda like the day you… started making me."

_Making me._

Shishido exhales, shakes his head. "No. I just wanted to give you something."

Finally, Choutarou begins unwrapping it. Slowly, so very slowly, as though he's drawing the act out as long as he can. He is, Shishido realizes. Of course he is. He's never had a present before and… Choutarou wants it to last as long as it can.

It fills Shishido with a strangely wretched, yet joyous feeling.

When the last strip of paper and the crooked bow comes away, Choutarou makes a sound as though he's been shot, bending over the box with the very distinctive logo printed in gold lettering on top.

Shishido starts, honestly worried for his well-being, but he never gets further than  _starting_.

Because then he's being held, hard and painful, face pressed into a broad chest and his hands are flailing uselessly at his side.

"Choutarou-" he wheezes, "I can't  _breathe_."

The grip loosens, but he doesn't let go and Shishido finds himself being embraced intimately, cradled, a face pressed into his hair. Hot exhales land against his cheek. Shishido shivers. He can't remember when anybody touched him like this, let alone was as close as this to him. A long, long time, that's for sure. A very long time.

"Thank you," Choutarou says. He sounds hurt. His body thrums with pent-up emotion.

He never programmed this.

Very, very carefully, as though they both might fly apart when he does, Shishido embraces him back. "You haven't even looked," he mutters.

Choutarou laughs, wildly, and presses him close again, but more as if he's worried what might happen if he lets go.

"I don't dare to," he admits. "I'm not sure I can stand to look at it.  _Thank you_."

"Don't be weird," Shishido says, pushing him away resolutely. "Take the stupid thing out. Let's see if you can play on it."

***

 

He can.

 

***

"This is illogical," Inui whispers, head in his hands as he pours endlessly over stacks and stacks and stacks of notebooks. They are piled up everywhere, all over the office, even invading Shishido's workspace. "It should have worked," he repeats.

Kaidoh stands nearby. "Sorry, senpai," it says. The words are like chips of ice, no actual-feeling sense of what it just said. The intonation is correct, cause-effect comprehension and suitable reaction perfect. And that is where it ends.

Shishido thinks about Choutarou, playing, hours on end as if stopping to create those sounds, his music, feels like a small death.

It doesn't make any sense to him, either.

***

"You're playing a dangerous game, Shishido," Oishi tells him.

Shishido glances at him, sharply from the corner of his eyes, mouth an irritable slash. Oishi looks steadily back, the sun reflecting on his dark irises like on the water of a lake.

They're caught between seasons. Sometimes midday brings an almost unbearable sweltering heat, but the evenings are nippy and windy. Shishido stands in the park with the sinking glare of the sun poking harsh bars through the still rather bare trees, bathed in its glow but huddled in a windbreaker. Not his own either. Would figure Choutarou is the one to head out prepared with something extra against the cold, while Shishido glanced through the window and deemed the warm hue of the sun good enough. Would figure he's the one who ended up with clattering teeth and Choutarou the one to nearly force him into the windbreaker.

Some distance off, Choutarou and Eiji walk together in a companionable one-way sort of conversation. With Eiji doing all of the rather loud talking. 

"And you aren't?" he asks after a long tense pause.

"Of course," Oishi admits. "But Eiji was created and appointed to me by the company itself. Whereas Choutarou-kun-"

"I know," he interjects, having no desire to hear that line of thought finished. "I know, dammit. But what the hell do you suggest I do now, huh? You tell me."

Oishi smiles, a placating gesture. "Right now? I don't think there is anything you can do. If you aren't careful they'll either confiscate him on basis of stolen goods and probably take him apart subsequently or they'll discover that you succeeded doing in what all your colleagues have failed to so far." There's no need to elaborate on the second possibility. A hand lands on his shoulder, steady. "I more meant that you have to be very, very careful."

Feeling more like a bastard than he would have if Oishi'd lost his temper, Shishido nods. "Yeah, I know."

"I will also, in all discretion, of course, see whether there are any options left to you in the company," Oishi adds quietly.

It's not such a crazy idea. Atobe isn't heartless. Somewhere he realizes that confronting Atobe out of his own volition might be the path of least resistance, as well as the safest one. But the knowledge that what he has now will fall apart and that Choutarou will become company property and will remain as such at the depot from there on… shivering, Shishido ducks deeper into the warm fabric.

Why doesn't he ever think this stuff through? 

And he's so damn sure that others take parts and supplies home, too, for further home-based investigation and that Atobe doesn't give a wink, as long as they try. It wouldn't have mattered either, if he hadn't brought Choutarou as far as he has. Hadn't completed him.

"It'll work out," Oishi offers, the hand on his shoulder squeezes comfortingly.

Answering with a nod, Shishido then decides that he's had enough of all this doom talk and he has no desire to pursue it any further. Instead he casts about for the others and finds them, way ahead, spindly black cutouts against the setting sun. 

Slowly they start after them, in no particular hurry. For all that it is cold, it's a beautiful evening. Even if they are as good as 'walking' their illegitimate androids in the park, like letting out the dog. It feels wrong. At least Eiji and Choutarou seem to get on well enough.

"What do you think they talk about, huh?" Shishido wonders quietly as he sees Choutarou duck his head to better catch Eiji's wild narrative.

Oishi smiles at him, a little secretively. "The same things we talk about," he answers.

***

He clears his throat once, twice.

"Saa, Choutarou," he goes, as offhand as he can. 

At the periphery of his vision, he can see Choutarou stop short near the doorway. A tall blur of uncertainly. Shishido knows he longs to reach for the violin and just play until he's immersed in it, or manages to loose himself in it somewhere, but maybe also find himself in the process, too. But he's not stupid, rather naïve at the edges, but far from stupid. Besides having a supercomputer for a brain, he's also extremely sensitive to Shishido's moods.

"Yes?" he goes, coming closer.

Washing a few plates to gather himself (by hand, like in the good old days), Shishido tries to keep himself calm and centered. If he's not careful this might be taken the wrong way.

"What's wrong?" Choutarou presses, more insistently. 

Dammit. He's just not good at this kinda crap.

"Look," he begins, but then sighs and shakes his head. "You know, right? That- that you're-"

The atmosphere becomes strained. A knife might not even be able to cleave it.

"That I'm what?"

Shishido thinks of the park and the setting sun and the windbreaker that wasn't his and a tall, tall silhouette at the end of the road. Waiting.

"If anybody figures out…" why is this so hard to say? "If anybody knows, they could take you away. And they might… wipe you. Re-install you for another purpose."

He leaves a pause. Choutarou adds nothing to fill the painful quiet and Shishido doesn't expect him to.

"With certain concessions in mind, I might be able to get you into Tannhauser and keep you safe there. Where they wouldn't be able to-" 

Unable to continue, Shishido simply shuts up, fingers clawed around the sponge he uses to scrub at the plates with. It's just the slosh of suds and water, the faint rustle of fabric and their breathing. When Choutarou does talk, Shishido jumps, not having noticed him getting as close as he suddenly is.

"Do you want me to-" 

" _No_." Shishido snaps at him, exasperated. "No, dammit, aren't you listening? Moron, you're supposed to be super smart and all. I'm trying to say that you're not fucking safe here. Got that? Choutarou, if they find out they'll come and get you. I might die trying to prevent it, but in the end there's nothing I can- I can-"

He scrubs angrily, upset and aggravated and for no particular reason other than that there is no good solution and that he knows that no matter how much he may have come to… whatever, that Jiroh is still right. And that stings, badly, like salt in raw wounds he didn't even know he had.

What Choutarou says next is full of his own anger, but the sort that comes forth out of pure dismay. "You don't have to die for me," he says, voice screwed tight and furious, but also very, very small.

Shishido sighs, rubs his wrist against his cheek and gets suds on his nose. "It's just a figure of speech, Choutarou," he says tiredly.

"Good," comes the instant reply. Blank and fake. Relieved over one thing, but newly upset also.

Flicking most of the water off his hands (and the remainder of it on his shirt) Shishido turns, peeved, to face him. Choutarou isn't looking at him. Carefully so.

"Nobody ought to." he says his voice too matter of fact, trying to convince himself more than Shishido. "Not for something that's not… real." Now he does look, fierce and angry, still. "Not alive."

"You're alive," Shishido counters, going for reprimanding but failing before he begins. It falls flat and it shouldn't, not now, and why is he so, so bad at this sort of thing?

"Not like you are," Choutarou whispers, hand lifting.

Shishido lets him. He doesn't know what else to do but let Choutarou have this, the shy press of his hand over Shishido's chest to feel his heart rattle about with anxiety. It's weird like this, in the bright kitchen light, the two of them facing and that smile flickering around that mouth.

"Choutarou," he murmurs, gaze veering away towards the comforting darkness of the living area.

"I like how it goes faster," Choutarou breathes, eyes sliding closed.

Sometimes Shishido feels like Choutarou is more alive than he is, the one with the heart that actually beats.

***

It's becomes difficult and unpleasant to try and see Choutarou as anything other than how he perceives him: real and alive.

The worst possible reality check he receives on the matter is the very last minute before he goes to sleep because that's when he shuts Choutarou down. It almost repulses him to speak the words now. If he could he'd stall or avoid going to sleep for as long as he could, but a certain someone insists on keeping up a steady stream of: 'Shouldn't you go to sleep, Shishido-san? It's late, maybe you should go to sleep. You should go to sleep, Shishido-san. Go to sleep!". 

But he hates to see Choutarou go and sit in the damn corner, like a wayward child told to think about its crimes and to… stop him from being. Somehow he always expects accusations in the morning, but of course there never are. Just a curve of the lips and a warm 'good morning'.

But even shut down, slumped and empty in the corner, that perception doesn't fade.

Sometimes he gets more, well, painful reminders that he might be very real and alive and all, but he's also a very real and alive  _android_. Who's not only got a super-computer for a brain, but also turns out to be... inhumanly strong.

They're lucky Jiroh is with them.

Sure, he knows very well just how damn fast that serve is. And when it's Choutarou's service game he has no business being distracted by… the curve of a pale hip that gets bared for an instant (and why, dammit? He knows it's there -he  _put_  it there for fuck's sake!).

But the instant it takes for his eyes to stray is all that 200km/h serve needs…

For it to smack him right between the eyes.

Kinda slapstick, ha ha, sure, but Shishido knows nothing for quite a long stretch of time. Or so it seems like. There's nothing and then there's hard, cold concrete under his back.

Someone screams his name, once, twice and then his first name. Hands touch him, almost painfully frantic and then jerk away when a voice snaps: "Don't move him! Something might be wrong in… in his head."

It's about then he can groan and squint a little. "Thanks a lot," he wheezes.

After a beat there's a huff of relieved laughter.

"Well, not that there isn't anything wrong in there  _now_ ," Jiroh amends. "Figure it'd kinda be scary if you wound up any more messed up than you already- hey, hey. Choutarou-kun, breathe. He'll be fine."

Shishido stirs, feebly, and attempts to open his eyes a little wider. That hurts, so he closes them again. "I'm fine," he grunts out.

"I'm sorry," Choutarou whispers. "I'm so sorry."

"It's fine," Shishido repeats. "I'm fine. Here, help me up." 

But it's Jiroh who has to hoist him to his unsteady feet and it's on Jiroh he bodily leans when they head home. His head swims, but he doesn't think it's too bad. By the time they get back at his apartment he can support himself, if he moves cautiously.

Woozily, he lurches inside to sit on his futon, grateful for the twilit dimness. At the door he can hear subdued whispers, one soothing but resolute and he realizes that Jiroh stopped thinking of him as a robot a long time ago. Because it is Choutarou he's attempting to soothe. That tone would never work on Shishido anyway.

The door closes with a click and there's only Choutarou's soft footfalls as he moves around in the room -just a few steps, the place is tiny- and then a rustle of clothes.

Groggily, he peers through his lashes. Choutarou is ducked into a miserable lump in his habitual corner. It takes a little effort, but speaking slowly he manages to pronounce with barely any slur: "What are you doing over there?"

A inhale. Hands and fingers tangle once, then go slack. "Waiting for you to shu-"

"It's way too early for that," Shishido snaps and then clutches at his temple as he sways. 

"I hurt you," Choutarou whispers. "I don't want to know that I did."

"That's dumb," Shishido mutters. "Don't be an idiot, accidents happen."

"Not like this one," he points out. "Not if I weren't-"

"That's enough," Shishido cuts in. "People hurt each other, sometimes accidentally and sometimes not so. It  _happens_. Stop moping about uselessly and fetch me an aspirin, idiot."

That seems to work better than Jiroh's gentle assurances. The fact that Shishido can be grumpy and order him around seems to cheer him a little (he takes a moment to wonder what the hell that says about him as a person) and he clambers faster to his feet and into the kitchen than that his dazed mind can follow. There's a clink of a glass and the squeak of the fridge.

By the time Choutarou brings him the glass with the tablet dissolving in water that sloshes around in tune to the shaking fingers holding it, Shishido has lowered himself to his side. The steadiness of laying down and being warm lulls him. So he kinda gropes to get a grip on something to haul himself into a sitting position with and finds Choutarou, who goes very, very still.

He holds out his hand for the glass.

There's a hesitation before Choutarou presses it into his hand, but when he does their fingers brush and the latter yanks his hand back as though scorched.

The glass lands with a thunk on the futon, spilling water and medicaments.

Choutarou winces and then begins to apologize -profusely. Wretchedly, as though vomiting the words out. Until Shishido claps his hand before his mouth. As soon as his palm makes contact with those lips, they freeze, half-open.

"Enough," Shishido says, calmer than he feels. Choutarou's lips are soft and warm. "I'm fine. Just tired." He makes sure to look into Choutarou's eyes, "It's fine. We're fine."

Some of the wildness vanishes and Shishido lifts his hand a little when he can feel Choutarou make an attempt to speak.

"Okay," he says. "I am sorry. I never wanted to hurt you."

"I know," Shishido assures him and then smiles.

He does.


	4. Part 4

He buys a second futon. Just can't stand Choutarou sitting in the corner like a lifeless marionette any longer. If he lies down it looks more natural, but lying on the bare floor seems cruel, too. Even though he cannot feel it when shut down, it bothers  _him_  too much. Especially after that incident. Now it feels as though he's punishing Choutarou every damn night, because isn't like Shishido is.

He tries to arrange it with a respectable distance between the both of them. Comes to face with an utterly ridiculous problem. The stupid apartment is too small. Shoving it up against the opposite side of the room seems kinda cold and unfriendly, but having it closer has the damn thing smack dab in the middle of everything. Shishido manages to trip six times over it in the half an hour he leaves it there. And any closer is just too close.

Choutarou watches him slide the futon around centimeter per centimeter, looking bemused. There's a pleased flush over his face, though.

After nearly a whole afternoon of grumbling and moving his few belongings around to no avail, Shishido stands with his hands on his hips, looking at it all and concedes that the place really is kinda small. Too small.

*** 

"Stop making such a show of it," Shishido grunts after having to hear Choutarou turn around into a new position of the umpteenth time.

If there was a Kama Sutra for all possible positions one might take to reach the blissful state of sleep, Choutarou has just gone through them all. And Shishido had to hear to him wriggle about, sheets rustling and making happy sighing noises. Which kinda bothers him. A lot.

"Sorry," Choutarou says. "I've never slept in a bed before."

Score, that one makes him feel like an ass again. Even though it isn't intended to.

"S'okay," he mutters. "But are you done now? Cause I'd kinda like to go to sleep."

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing."

"So-" he swallows the rest convulsively.

Shishido grins and shifts to his side to face him. He can vaguely make out his profile as he stares at the ceiling. His hands are laced above the sheets, carefully posed. 

"Ah, Shishido-san?" 

"Hm."

"Might I…" 

"What?"

"Would you mind not shutting me down?" Choutarou asks, voice low. "Eiji-san says he can dream. I'd like to try and see if… if I can too. I won't move around."

Shishido moves until he's curled on his side. He feels kinda bad that he never considered the possibility that Choutarou might prefer to play at make-believe than, well. He smiles, sour. Who wouldn't prefer pretending over the other option?

In the dark his eyes find Choutarou's, who's watching him anxiously. He nods, "Sure."

The smile is instant and bright as a lightbulb. It hurts Shishido in the stomach. "Thank you," comes the hushed answer. And then, "Good night." One last rustle and Shishido is left to stare at a broad back.

He's still staring at it, three hours later, unable to sleep. Not that he knows for sure -not without poking or asking, anyway-, but Choutarou looks asleep. Either he's doing a really good job pretending, or he really is sleeping. Wonders where he's off to, if he is.

"Sweet dreams," he whispers and closes his eyes also.

***

Next morning he wakes up to see Choutarou facing him on his side, one hand palm-up on the floor between them and the other pressed against his mouth, like a child. His body is relaxed, but in a natural way. Tossing has left the sheets lower, caught at his waist, and his shirt rumpled. The little light that dusts his face shows the eyes moving behind the lids.

 _Amazing_ , Shishido thinks.

He clears his throat and says, "Hey," as gently as he can.

The lids squeeze and a discontented noise rises from his throat. There's a bleary, unfocussed look in his eyes when he opens them.

"Sleep well?" Shishido asks, sitting up himself and stretching.

A grunt. Choutarou burrows under the sheets, an irritable lump.

That makes Shishido laugh, out loud and with delighted surprise. "Not a morning person, that's for sure," he shakes his head and stands up. Stretches until his pajama yawns at his stomach, lifting clear of his waistband. His spine pops. When he's done he finds Choutarou peering at him from over the edge, looking rather accusing and messy. "Well, that answers that question. You did sleep."

"Until you woke me up," is the reply. "It was  _nice_ ," he adds as though Shishido was the one to come up with the concept of 'getting up in the morning' purely to torment him.

 _Nice_.

Eiji's earnest face repeats before his mind's eye:  _I dreamt of Oishi._

Why he wants to know, or why it'd matter, he's not sure. All he realizes is that he really, really wants to ask:  _'Did you dream of me?'_. Studiously avoiding to cross gazes with him, Shishido goes with a mildly interested intonation: "So, what did you dream of?"

Choutarou sits up and slips from under the covers. Which he promptly begins to make, despite Shishido's wadded ball at the end of his own bed indicating that he's free to do otherwise. His shoulders are strong, wide. Muscles shift under the thin fabric.

"Tennis," he says, cheerfully. "I dreamt of tennis."

"Tennis?"

"Aa," Choutarou goes, tugging the folds smooth. "Tennis."

Shishido looks at the back of his head. The rising sun catches on his messy hair just  _so_. Why did he make it fair again? He can't remember. He can only look at the back of Choutarou's neck, the soft vulnerable nape and the way his hair curls there, almost sweetly.

The swell of disappointment is like blood rising in a fresh cut. 

***

"Shishido, my light, my love, my life."

"No," Shishido says, quite simply.

"You haven't even heard what I wanted to say," comes the vaguely plaintive reply. It would have been more convincing had it been less smug. Oshitari appears at his right and leans against his workbench, causing a small tremor. It makes him slip and squash his right index finger under the wrench he was wielding in the tight confines of the android's chest hollow. 

"Fuck," he snarls, sticks it in his mouth to suck on. A copper-like tang fills his mouth. "You bastard. What is it? What do you want?"

"Nothing but your love and affection, naturally," Oshitari says. "That and Jiroh, if you can manage it." 

A paper dangles before his eyes. It's shiny and filigreed around the edges and Shishido groans at the all too familiar sight of it. "Fuck,  _again_?"

"Keigo does so like parties," Oshitari says, mouth curling. "That and he needs to get laid."

Shishido lays the wrench to the side, lest he attempts to bash Oshitari's skull in with it. Kite a _nd his tight purple pants_  are just a gunshot away and all. Today doesn't seem like a feasible moment to get his brains splattered against the wall of his office -not when he's got a seashell in his rucksack to show Choutarou.

"I'm not his pimp," Shishido hisses.

Oshitari's mouth opens and his lips start to form a word -one that looks potentially suspicious. So Shishido punches him in the ribs, not hard enough to bruise or injure, but a no-nonsense warning all the same. "If you say jailbait, I will hurt you."

Looking genuinely startled, Oshitari says, rubbing his side: "I was just going to say that he and Keigo got along very well last time and Jiroh is single. And Kabaji approves."

"Kabaji- wha?" making a half-twirl in his chair, Shishido frowns at him. "You discuss Atobe's love life" -or lack of it, which amuses Shishido to no end- "with Kabaji?"

"Why not?" he asks. "Kabaji knows him best of all. Plus he seems to be a bit of a romantic at heart."

The probability of it is too disturbing by far. Oshitari is a matchmaking terror all by himself. A rather painful recollection of Oshitari blackmailing him into going out for dinner with a girl from archives comes to mind. Apparently she had the hugest crush on him. Declared him her one true love. After said dinner she had never talked to him, let alone acknowledged his existence,  _again_. To add Kabaji 'the matchmaking android' to the tally is too much for his traumatized brain to handle. Especially in conjunction with rumored x-ray vision.

"No," he says. Firmly. 

Jiroh is his best friend, almost family. He's not letting him get thrown out there for Atobe-who-needs-to-get-laid-ouch-my-brain to molest. That and the idea that they'd -oh damn- get together? A ridiculous image of him and Jiroh being joined by Atobe at Tensai Tarts comes to mind. No thanks.

Better amend that. "No fucking way."

An arm slips around his shoulders. Oshitari leans in, mouth nearly brushing the curve of his ear and whispers, voice slick like a sheet of ice: "And who will be your partner, hm, Shishido? I will admit that you'd probably strike a more impressive image with someone tall and broad by your side, instead of little golden Jiroh. But as you don't have such a partner to readily accompany you-" he pauses, deliberately, "or do you?"

Shishido is as still and blank as he knows to be. Most of all he doesn't look at Oshitari. "You know someone like that?" he asks, voice distant.

"No," Oshitari says and leans back a little. "But I suspect you might."

Despite his misgivings, Shishido looks at him, eyes wide. Oshitari is so close he can feel his breath on his face. He's cold through, numb with shock.

"Please deliberate your options carefully," Oshitari murmurs. This time his voice is utterly different. In a way Shishido has never heard it before. "I would rather not see you hurt."

"Yuushi."

"I am your friend," Oshitari says, pulling back, but still looking at him. "You know that, right?"

They stare at one other for a long, long time. Oshitari has always been hard to read. His mouth spouts a lot of crap, and more than half of it he neither means nor actually feels. He's always been a nuisance, better at his job than Shishido, more useful overall (even though he rarely makes himself so) and always capable of putting his finger right where it smarts the most. He's good at understanding androids, better at reading humans and ace at pissing Shishido off. Possibly because he's the polar opposite: everything he feels or thinks is right there on his face, should one care to look for it.

It seems Oshitari cares.

He didn't know.

"I-"

"By the way," Oshitari says, slapping a newspaper over the invitation on his workbench. "Isn't it about time you looked for a bigger place?" It's opened to the real estate listings. Some have been circled.

Shishido keeps staring at him.

The infuriating twist of lips is back. "Have a productive day," Oshitari says, before walking out again. 

For the rest of his day, Shishido sits staring at both the invitation and newspaper, not understanding at all what just occurred.

Completely unproductive.

***

"Shishi- what happened? What's wrong?" 

Shishido shuffles inside, mind so crowded with information and misgivings and suspicions that he can't tell one idea from the other. The motorcycle helmet gets pulled out of his hands and he's helped out of his jacket as well.

"Does your- ah." Choutarou peers into his eyes, worried. "Does your head still hurt?"

"My head?" Shishido manages, even more confused than just a second ago.

"From my serve," comes the whisper.

"Tch," Shishido rolls his eyes. "Hardly. You're gonna have to hit me harder than that."

That gets a completely horrified look. "I don't want to hit you again! I didn't-"

Shishido nudges him, playfully. "I was kidding," he tells him.

"It's not funny," Choutarou insists, pale and drawn-looking. "I didn't-"

"I know," he soothes -or tries to sound like it, at least, but it ends up coming out annoyed. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

Choutarou looks very worried about it.

Mouth curling a bit, Shishido shakes his head. Fishes around in his rucksack and takes out the shell. It works. Choutarou's eyes lit up, like the rising sun itself and Shishido wants to take that smile and keep it in his pocket all day long.

To see Choutarou take hold of it, realize that he knows what it is but has never actually held or seen it for himself… he derives a sort of warm, sweet pleasure from seeing him handle it. A seashell is not something particularly awe-inspiring or rare, but Choutarou holds it and carefully explores it with every single sense he's capable of. And as Shishido gave him all five that's what he does. 

Feel: his fingers going over the rough, ribbed outside and then dipping inside to feel the mother of pearl there, smiling at the near silky smoothness of it.

Taste: pressing it against his lips first, then parting them. The tip of his tongue appearing for just a moment, quick but just too curious not to. He can taste, as well as a human can. He makes a face at the chalky, mineral residue.

Sight: it's a colorful shell. Blue-purple hues in a spiral-pattern through off-white, and the myriad of colors swirling together on the inside. Shishido sees him turn it over, and over, and over again and suspects that the place will be covered with seashell sketches and paintings tomorrow.

Sound: he knows how it works. Machine learning. But it's still arresting to see him lift it and hold it against his ear. "I can hear the ocean," he murmurs, even though he knows it's not that what he hears.

Smell: then, lastly, he smells it, eyes fluttering closed as he breathes in deeply. Holds it in. When he finally exhales, his lashes lift and he smiles.

"Salty," he says.

Shishido nods, smiling himself. Or rather, not having stopped since he started.

"Sorry," Choutarou goes, predictably enough. "Must look rather weird. Me ah, sniffing it."

The smile slides into a smirk. "Yeah, you did turn out to be a head case alright," he says over his shoulder as he heads into the kitchen.

"Must be thanks to that head case scientist that put me together, then," Choutarou mutters darkly.

Coming up short, Shishido pauses, then turns, unsure what to think of that remark nor of how to respond to it. They look at one other, ten of Shishido's heartbeats -he counts them and he guesses Choutarou does, too- and then Choutarou grins.

"Oi!" Shishido protests and smacks him over the head.

There's some playful pulling and shoving, and Choutarou  _giggles_ when his ribs accidentally get tickled, which sets Shishido off into howling laughter. A blush lingers on Choutarou's cheeks when they putter about with dinner. Ever so often Shishido will glance at him, mouth twitching and there'll be an indignant 'I didn't  _giggle_!', complete with supposedly forbidding frown. And Shishido will start laughing all over again.

His stomach hurts by the time he's done eating and not because he had too many seconds. When the dishes have been cleared and they have retreated to their futons, Shishido feels steady and relaxed enough to bring out the invitation.

Choutarou is on his stomach an arm's length away from him, eyes flicking to the strategically positioned seashell as watercolors dampen the pages of his sketchbook.

"Saa, Choutarou?" Shishido goes into the stillness of the room.

"Yes?" Eyes keep trained on his artwork, focused and deliberate in every single lick of his brush on the paper.

Turning to his side to watch his face, Shishido says, "There's this party Atobe is throwing. I gotta go, cause, yeah. I work there and all."

The stroke of his brush falters for a moment. "Oh?"

"Yeah," Shishido says. "We gotta take someone along. You know, since it's kinda formal."

"Of course," Choutarou goes. The brush lifts away and his chin drops a millimeter or two. "Who're you taking?"

"I'm sorry," Shishido whispers.

"Why?" Choutarou murmurs back. "It'd be asking for trouble."

"I know you'd like to…" Shishido begins. What he doesn't add to finish is -you've never been to a party before. Might not ever. If things had been different.

"Shishido-san?"

Shishido stops attempting to finish his half-hatched sentence. Listens.

"Thank you," Choutarou says and his smile crosses the distance between as sure as if he'd have reached out to take his hand. Or heart, because that's what it feels like most. That's where it hurts most.

"What for? I'm taking Jiroh, not-"

"That you care enough to consider. That you care enough to think about it. That you care enough to feel sorry that you can't," Choutarou spells out. Shoulders lift slightly. "Take your pick."

Being the one on the receiving end of a blush, Shishido turns to lie on his back, staring studiously at the ceiling. "Of course I-" he swallows, throat working. Then he repeats what Oshitari explicitly told him that afternoon, that which Shishido never got before and needed to have explained first to see its truth: "We're friends, right?"

A long pause.

The setting sun pulls stretched shadows out of everything. Even Shishido's shadow, which leaks from his body to climb up against Choutarou's. 

"Friends," Choutarou echoes. His voice is tight and funny, like it's being squeezed through a narrow tube. Then he nods, head bobbing neatly up and down. The brush gets swirled in a small bowl of water. A cloud of stormy blue blossoms, stirred into motion. "Yes," he affirms. He means it, too.

Yet Shishido feels that he's just said the most wrong thing he could've altogether.

***

"How do I look?" he asks, voice terse. Then he answers his own question. "I look ridiculous, don't I? I do. Shit. I'm calling in sick. No, Atobe'd kill me. Sanada'd kill me. Fuck, he'll order Kite and  _his tight purple pants to kill me_ -"

A head pokes around the door of the bathroom. "Kite and his who _ooooo_ …" There'd be more 'ooooo', Shishido suspects, if there was any breath left in him to utter them. But the sound leaves him in a whoosh of air, as though he's been sucker punched. Just silence. Choutarou blinks. Rubs his eyes. Peers. Blinks again. Then he flushes, almost violently as though he happened upon a bondage party of the more twisted flavor -possibly involving Oshitari and bunny slippers- and he withdraws his head hurriedly.

Shishido looks at his reflection. Sourly. He knew it. "Give me my damn jeans," he bites out, feeling humiliated. It's a sensation he doesn't deal well with.

"Erm," comes Choutarou's rather not so eloquent comeback.

"Choutarou?" he calls.

"Jeans are… gone. I cannot, er- yes," he sounds as though he's nodding at his own nonsense.

Shishido sticks his head into the room, scowling. Choutarou blinks at him, standing ramrod straight in the middle of his futon. Shishido frowns until his forehead hurts. He's late and he doesn't want to go and he's wearing a goddamn tuxedo (why?!) and he feels utterly, completely lame. He wants his jeans and he wants them now and Atobe can take any stupid commentary he's got and stick it up his-

Right then the melody of 'A Shave and A Haircut' is buzzed out on his doorbell. Jiroh yells something indistinct through the door.

When Choutarou turns to go and open it, he reveals the 'missing' jeans being held behind his back.

"Hello," Jiroh says on a yawn. "This better be good. Is he ready?"

"Uhm," Choutarou says. It involves a certain twitch of the head that may be a nod or a shake. Or a crossbreed. 

Jiroh raises his eyebrows.

"Make him give me my jeans back," Shishido growls. He feels  _naked_.

"Urgh," Jiroh says. "No way. I am wearing a tuxedo and so are you. Let's go James Bond, before I fall asleep."

Withdrawing into the bathroom once more, Shishido stares at himself in the mirror. He's uncomfortable and it  _shows_. He doesn't know what to think, but he's certain Atobe will laugh at him. Someone enters the bathroom. He thinks it might be Jiroh to come and pry him away, but the sheer height of the person proves otherwise.

Choutarou appears behind him.

In the reflection he can meet Choutarou's eyes over the crown of his own head with a  _generous_  hand span to spare.

So tall.

Pink stains the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, and flushes darker still when he rests both hands on Shishido's shoulders. They cup them completely. It's like heat spills from his palms, inflaming his body where it dribbles down his chest. Shishido shivers.

"You look fine," Choutarou murmurs. 

His hands squeeze, gently. Shishido can feel the pads of his thumbs against his nape. It's so warm in the bathroom that his face colors slightly. Just as he thinks he might actually break into a sweat the hands are removed, sliding down his front to fix his crooked tie, to twitch at the lapels. He can't breathe. Fingers tentatively rake through his hair, tousling it more artfully, and then firmer again as Shishido feels his eyes lid against the sensation of it. It feels good and it's all he can do but to lean his face into the touch.

"I'm going to lie down and sleep and you'll have to carry me and you'll be even later and I'll abandon you there for more pleasant company if you don't hurry up!" Jiroh sing-songs.

Both of them start. Choutarou's hands slip out of his hair. He sticks them firmly in the pockets of his pants instead. Their eyes meet one last time. Shishido manages a faint smile.

Choutarou doesn't return it. His voice is hoarse when he says, "Have a good time."

***

There's a reason Shishido hates parties.

More specifically Atobe's parties. Most of the time the generous presence of food and drinks make up for it. But the bad outweighs the perks on these occasions. One, Atobe is there. Two, Oshitari is there. Three, everybody  _else_  from work is there. Four, he's in a tuxedo. But number one does a pretty good job all by himself to poop any party Shishido might attend.

"Ah, Shishido," his voice wafts out from a clique of uppity business men. "I was worried you might not show."

"I'm sure that would have left you devastated," Shishido mutters, turning towards him.

Atobe steps from between two men, smirk already in place. He's resplendent in a white tuxedo, groomed and tweaked to outshine everyone present. He seems to be wearing lipgloss. Shiny lipgloss. It has no right to look as good on any man the way it does on him.

Instinctively Shishido braces himself. Tries not to appear bothered when Atobe rakes his eyes up and down his person with shamelessly judgmental intentions. "Well," he says.

Shishido begins to work up a scowl, the kind that'd make paint peel off the walls upon contact. 

"You ought to dress more like this," Atobe says. "It's a waste you don't."

"Told ya you looked just fine," Jiroh pipes up, having hunted down a pair of shirttails bearing a platter of champagne flutes. He gives one to Shishido, before clinking their glasses together. They ring beautifully. "You're too insecure."

Sometimes he wishes he could grab Jiroh by the ankles and dangle him through a window or something. "I'm not insecure. I just don't like to wear a tuxedo," he says tersely.

"Sure," Jiroh agrees, too easily enough for it to leave any credence to Shishido's statement of the contrary.

"Akutagawa-san," Atobe says, surprised. "What a pleasure to see you again."

"I'll bet," Shishido growls against the rim of his glass.

Someone stands on his toes, sharply. From the glint of his eyes it seems to be Jiroh. Feisty little shit. 

"Hello, Atobe-san," Jiroh greets him, voice even. His eyes glitter from over the edge of his glass. "Tell me," he adds, conversationally, "how do you feel about the ethical issues your work raises?"

Atobe blinks.

Shishido blinks, too.

"I - uh, well," Atobe flounders.

Shishido suppresses the violent urge to point and laugh like a five-year old.

Nodding, as though that perfect sense, Jiroh continues: "Of course there must be all sorts of precautions in place to make sure that the actual creation of an individual, artificial or not, is handled correctly."

Atobe blinks again.

Shishido wonders whether this might be the moment to club Jiroh over the head or if that would draw too many attention to himself and the subject at hand. 

"An entrepreneur of such caliber as you must've got quite some safeguards in place, I imagine" Jiroh says, smiling as he takes Atobe's arm.

Atobe preens tentatively.

For some reason he's not too surprised he winds up at the walking buffet effectively dateless, about five minutes later. Sometimes he forgets how scary Jiroh can be when he puts his mind to it (like that time he shoved Shishido out of the top bunk because he wanted it and Shishido split his eyebrow). Oh well, he's Atobe's problem now. Shishido shrugs philosophically and reaches for a cracker with cheese, because that's the only thing he recognizes.

"You should try the caviar," Oshitari informs him. "It's delicious."

It gets pushed under his nose. It looks like blubber. Before Oshitari can get it into his head to try and feed it to him, Shishido snatches a cheese cracker and stomps it in his mouth. "No thanks," he mumbles.

"I have just witnessed something awfully curious," Oshitari informs him as they drift down the table stuffing their faces with the idle hunger only men seem to posses. "You brought Jiroh and I thank you for that. Yet Keigo didn't appear to have decided whether he was happy about it or not."

"Jiroh's tougher than you think him to be," Shishido says, placated with the idea that Atobe might not be feeling very smug at all right now.

That gets a nod. A fruit tart disappears into his mouth. "I figured as much," Oshitari admits and inhales another fruit tart for good measure. "Oh, look, there's Kite-san and his… oh  _my_." 

"Oh no," Shishido says.

"His tuxedo is  _purple_ ," Oshitari says in hushed tones, as if he does not want to scare his own unholy glee away.

Kite spots them and comes over. "Evening," he says. "The two of you, huh? Somehow I am not surprised."

"Wha?" Shishido goes.

Oshitari looks like the cat that got the cream and a whole cage of canaries. He puts an arm around Shishido's shoulders. "We do our best to remain professional at work, of course."

"Drop dead!" Shishido snarls, hitting the arm away. "Don't listen to him," he tells Kite. "It's Atobe, he-"

"Atobe?!" Kite yells. "You're doing the boss?!"

Everybody in a ten meter radius stares at him. Shishido wishes he'd spontaneously combust on the spot. "No-" he grounds out. "I meant that Atobe  _stole_  my date. My date that is not Oshitari. My date that will never ever be Oshitari."

Oshitari smiles, none to bothered. "I live in hope." 

"That little blond boy?" Kite says, brow curling like the lock of his hair does against his forehead.

"He's the same age as me," Shishido hisses, beginning to discover new heights (or is that depths) to which his dislike for Kite can go -beyond the purple pants. "He's my best  _friend_ ," he adds, for good measure.

Dark eyes narrow speculatively. "So he's free?"

Shishido doesn't grace that with an answer.

The pleasure is, of course, all Oshitari's to do it for him. "For now," he says. But with those two words a whole story is told. A story that might have a slightly pornographic ending, that is. There's a strategic pause and then Oshitari casts about feigning surprise, "Hm, I wonder where they went."

"Please excuse me," Kite says distractedly, wandering off.

Shishido and Oshitari share a glance.

"Is it me, or is everybody gay here?" Shishido asks him.

Oshitari pats his head. "Believe me when I say it's you."

Shishido hits him.

***

After three hours of having put up with his nonsense Shishido manages to distract Oshitari by drawing his attention to Sanada's very formal kimono. Oshitari being Oshitari had gone over. Clearly he has a death wish. If they get lucky Sanada might shoot him.

It's quite a few hours past midnight. Shishido wanders around the edges of the ballroom, lurking in the shadowy corners and dodging colleagues. He feels out of place. Candles are lit all over the hall, not only in the chandeliers but perching on every available lip and ridge, flames flickering. People dance and talk and laugh. Shishido sips at his champagne -his… fourth? Fifth? He lost count- and wonders whether Jiroh is alright and happy.

That's when he sees him -them- Atobe and Jiroh.

Dancing.

The surge of 'fuck no' he'd expected doesn't come. Not when Jiroh is smiling like that in response to whatever it is Atobe is saying and most certainly not when Atobe looks at Jiroh as if he's the most awe-inspiring thing he's ever seen in return. He didn't know Atobe was capable of looking at anyone like that besides his own reflection in the mirror.

Mirror. 

His skin tingles where Choutarou held his shoulders hours earlier, as though the memory is infused with his physical touch. What would Choutarou have done if he'd been here? What would he have liked the most? The candles? The reflecting marble floors? The way everything smells -expensive perfume and cloying scented candles and food? The chandeliers, dangling like giant light-infused gems above their heads? Maybe the music. Classical, of course. Atobe likes that kinda stuff, too. Would he have danced? Can he dance?

If he can, it is not something Shishido wrapped into the package.

And… with whom? Shishido swallows.

Atobe has a hand on the small of Jiroh's back. His eyes never leave the face turned up to his.

Smiling vaguely, Shishido decides he can live with it. That is, after he gets another glass of champagne. He drinks without tasting as he weaves in and out through pockets of people. The music is delicately upsweeping, a sweet thrill Shishido only recognizes when the symphony is halfway. Violins.

Beethoven.

Shishido's breath snags in his throat. What is he doing here, anyway? He's tired. He's  _lonely_  -always, but less so at home.

Home.

One last look to see how Jiroh is faring -towards a promising destination judging by his glow- and then he puts the glass aside. As he leaves the ballroom the music surges to an urgent pinnacle, almost like the wind easing along his stride. Shishido exits into a dark hallway. Candles wink at regular intervals, leading the way. So he follows. And winds up lost. It seems all hallways have candles in them. Just like most hallways seem to lead towards darkened yet unlocked rooms. Rooms that are not always empty, either. 

 _Sex, drugs and rock 'n roll_ , Shishido thinks. How to do it the snob way.

It takes him a while to puzzle his way out. Especially when he might've had too much alcohol. Plus that the stupid hallways all look the same. He wishes some people would just  _get a room_  (literally!) instead of sucking faces where Shishido can see them, giving him a nasty start ever so often. Eventually he locates what must be a side door, or back door, or whatever door, just not the one he came in through.

Outside he finds himself in a rose garden. In the star-lit night the red blooms are jet black, the white ones silver. Beautiful. It's an oasis of peace and quiet.

 _This is what he'd have liked the most,_  Shishido thinks almost absent-mindedly,  _the contrast._

He'd probably paint it.

It's cold, or it should be, but the alcohol makes him flushed with an unnatural warmth. The hair against his temples is damp. He hopes there'll be taxis not too far from the garden. Small chance of him making it back home otherwise.

Right when he thinks he can see headlights, with engines thrumming in the background, Shishido walks in on yet another couple playing tonsil hockey. He starts -badly, flinching backwards from what he sees without the identity of those two horrified faces registering.

"Excuse me," he mumbles, hurrying away, towards the safety of the cabs.

Only when he's inside of one, warm and safe, does his mind catch up with what he saw. He goes cold to the bone.

"Fuck," Shishido breathes.

Oishi and Eiji's faces are burned into his mind's eye, with their swollen lips and lingering hands. Oishi and Eiji. Kissing. Oishi. and. Eiji. Kissing. Each other.

"Fuck," he repeats, heartfelt. "You damn idiots."

With that discovery haunting him, the ride home seems endless. He's not a little drunk and confused and tired and lonely and frightened. With his fumbling, cold hands and clouded mind he doesn't get the door open on the first try. Nor on the second. Or third. And the short hike from the cab to the apartment left him shivering and hating the stupid tuxedo and all he wants is to get inside and curl up before the heater to sleep it off.

He's cursing softly, shoving feebly at the door and struggling with the key when it opens all by itself. Or not. Choutarou steadies him when he tumbles inside as the door gives. Shishido looks at him, teeth clattering. He's awfully warm. He shuffles closer and inside, so the door can be closed again. It leaves them standing in a huddle, Shishido nearly in the circle of Choutarou's arms.

He's doesn't have the look of someone who has only just awakened. The laptop's lighted screen and scattering of pencils and brushes confirms as much. The room is shadowed and cramped, but is inviting and familiar. A sekiyu heater glows in the one last empty corner, bathing the room in a red glow. Standing by the door leaves his back twice as cold, as though the night pries through the edges to clutch at him.

Inching closer as to absorb some of his body heat, Shishido murmurs, "Did you wait up for me?"

"Maybe," Choutarou says, lips twitching. "Are you… ah. Have you had too much to drink, Shishido-san?"

"Ryou."

"What?"

"I wish you'd call me Ryou," Shishido says. He feels himself unraveling at the edges, like a worn cloth. He's so damn tired. "That's my stupid first name, right? So why not?"

Dark brows jump up a little. "You  _have_  had too much to drink. Where's Jiroh-san?"

"You call Jiroh, Jiroh," Shishido mumbles to himself.

"Shishido-san," Choutarou says firmly, dipping his head to catch his wandering eyes. "Where is Jiroh-san?"

Pulling himself together a little, Shishido answers with a sigh. "Right now? Still in Atobe's arms I imagine. Not sure where and I don't wanna know either, but safe." He looks at Choutarou accusingly. "I wouldn't leave him if he weren't safe."

Brown eyes smile at him. So do those lips. Choutarou has a nice mouth. Full and kind, when he has this sorta look. "I know," he assures him. "It's the other way around I was worried about. Why you are here all by yourself." 

"I'm an adult," Shishido tells him indignantly. Then adds, "There were cabs."

"I see," Choutarou says. 

Shishido keeps looking at him. And his mouth. Eventually Choutarou rests a hand against the middle of his back and steers him into the room. A few steps and they are standing in the middle of it, Shishido motionless and bleary.

"Did you have a good time?" Choutarou asks.

A shrug, but then he considers. "It was okay," he admits. Then adds: "I saw Oishi and Eiji kissing."

Going very, very still, Choutarou hums a little. "Ah, I see." A warm hand touches Shishido's wrist, lingers over his pulse point.  

"I'm tired," Shishido says, suddenly. His body still trembles. His head swims. His eyes find a futon with the covers peeled back invitingly and Shishido longs to curl up there and sleep. The wretched tuxedo has to go first.

There's uncoordinated attempts at undressing, but he stumbles and sways, until Choutarou is there helping him. So he kinda leans into his chest and lets him, drifting off. It feels good. Natural. He doesn't mind Choutarou taking his hands and pushing them into the sleeves, nor even when he undoes his pants and pushes them down his hips.

"Sorry," he exhales into Choutarou's chest.

"It's alright," comes the reply into his hair. Fingers curl around the hem of the thin t-shirt he had under the dress shirt, lifting. "Arms up," Choutarou says softly. His voice trembles the way Shishido's body does.

Shishido lifts his arms. He aches, in the center of his being. So when his head comes free, feathering his hair in all directions and then finally his wrists, he lowers them again. Around Choutarou's shoulders. The shirt drops near his feet.

His skin erupts in goosebumps.

"Shishido-san." It is barely louder than the intake of breath on which it is uttered. 

"Hm?" he just goes.

His face is pressed just below Choutarou's collarbone. He can feel the hard ridge of it against his forehead through the shirt. He can feel him breathe, erratically, feel the muscles expand and contract as he does so. When he turns his head so his cheek is resting against him, Choutarou flinches.

"Don't-" he hisses, pushing him back -gently enough.

It's like a smack in the face and sobers him up instantly. "Sorry," he says, appalled at himself and his lack of self-control. He shakes his head, disbelieving. The room spins and Shishido sinks to his knees to prevent himself from keeling over.

Surprisingly enough, Choutarou sinks down with him, into a nice seiza. "Careful," he says.

Shishido can't stand to look at him. What's  _wrong_  with him? What was he thinking going around hugging Choutarou unannounced and not even knowing whether it'd be alright. Why would Choutarou even  _want_  to, just like this, with no reason? His looks at his boney knees. And he's not even wearing anything other than a pair of snug boxers.  _Idiot_ , he screams at himself. Idiot.

Fingers lift his chin, until he concedes to look at Choutarou. "I didn't mean to push you away," Choutarou says, hand dropping when their eyes meet. "It's weird when you do that… when my. My chest is empty. You won't hear anything."

"It's not empty," Shishido sighs, rubbing at his face and breaking the eye-contact.

"But it's not like yours," Choutarou insists, mulish. His own eyes have re-located to Shishido's chest. "Just look," he says, awed.

Shishido looks. Makes a wry face. Nope, sure isn't all like Choutarou's. Kinda scrawny.

"Your pulse point," Choutarou clarifies.

Ah.

That again. He looks. After a moment he  _sees_  it, too. Smack-dab between the slight indentation his breastbone makes and his left nipple, his skin jumps ever so slightly. His heart. Shishido is vaguely horrified at the sight of it. He knows it is there all right, but watching it beat like that is as though watching the clock of his own mortality count down irrevocably.

But Choutarou is watching it with such horrible, overwhelming  _tenderness_  on his face. Painfully, almost, the way his brows are drawn together in an inverted frown and his lips are clenched. "Does it hurt?" he asks, voice hushed. Eyes flick up briefly to his.

"What?" Shishido says, voice lowered like Choutarou's is. As though they're sharing secrets.

"Your heart," Choutarou says. "It moves so hard. Doesn't it hurt?"

Shishido looks at him, at the face that is as familiar to him as his own. "Sometimes," he whispers. 

Whatever his face shows then, Choutarou doesn't catch it. His hand lifts halfway and then halts, outstretched fingers curling closed.

He might be drunk, but even he can tell that they both need it. Only now his inhibitions are lowered enough to actually do it, gathering Choutarou closer until they are embracing once more. This time he's held back and he has Choutarou's head tucked under his chin as the latter leans in a forced stoop to press his face to Shishido's bare chest. Listening.

It's late. 

Shishido is tired. He lays his cheek on Choutarou's hair and closes his eyes.

When he opens them again it's almost morning. Gray light creeps through the blinds, illuminating the dust-motes swirling around. His exhales make small clouds in the early morning chill. His lids are heavy and sleep is still holding him, but something woke him up, something that jolted his eyes open for an instant. Someone. Choutarou is either dreaming, or is simply a twitcher. His hand convulses over Shishido's chest again.

That same someone put a shirt on him and maneuvered him towards a futon. The same someone holding him. 

They are not quite embracing. But they are sharing the same heap of blankets and Choutarou's hand is splayed on his chest… the left side of course. It's not awkward. Shishido wonders whether it is the magical hour before dawn that makes this so natural. Or maybe they both realized that their self-inflicted loneliness was stupid, especially since they could just reach out and have this.

Nothing happened. 

They just held each other. But they are in bed together. Shishido wonders if it matters when  _they_  are okay. Suddenly, hauntingly, he sees Oishi and Eiji again, their mouths clinging and needy. His breathing catches, and his heart does, too.

Choutarou makes a soft, low sound. Questioning.

"Shh," Shishido says, lulling. He pushes the image violently away and turns closer towards the warm body next to him.

They go back to sleep.

***

Jiroh looks like death warmed over. His hair is a bird's nest and there are dark shadows under his eyes. He droops sleepily over his noodles and yawns a lot. But sometimes he'll also bestow a random, dopey smile upon his food, as though it just murmured sweet nothingness at him.

Shishido grins against the rim of his cup. "You should never put out until the third date," he clucks his tongue, shakes his head.

"Yes, you with your vast knowledge ought to know all about it," Jiroh mumbles, rolling his eyes.

A sneaker kicks Shishido's shin under the table.

"I have knowledge!" Shishido splutters. He does!

"Oh, I'm sorry," Jiroh says. "I meant knowledge that isn't a decade outdated."

Now Shishido kicks Jiroh under the table, sharp enough his friend winces.

"It's not been that long!" he defends himself. "And it's not as though getting into Atobe's panties makes you Casanova or anything."

"Yeah," Jiroh sighs, smiling again and obviously thinking about Atobe and his panties or whatever.

A perfectly horrifying idea. Shishido shudders accordingly.

"We're going to take it slow now," Jiroh says more seriously. "We hardly know each other."

Shishido nods. He needs to get used to the reality of his best buddy banging his boss. What has the world come to? Oishi and Eiji kissing, Atobe and Jiroh doing stuff, what's next? Oshitari and Kite? If that happens, he'll shoot his own brains out himself, thanks very much.

"Anyway," Jiroh goes on. "I pried some information out of him first."

"Before you pried him out of his pants - _ouch_ , stop kicking me!"

"Stop making me!" Jiroh counters crossly. "And listen, it concerns Choutarou and what might happen if you don't have him registered as company property. As it stands now he's a rogue android running on highly illegal software -no, shut up and listen. What you did will fall under the same law and restrictions that applies to cloning. It's not done. Period."

Shishido looks at him, playful grin fading like snow before the sun. "What are you saying?"

"If they find him, they'll destroy him," Jiroh says. "Not Atobe. The cops or whatever three letter abbreviation responsible for it. He'll get wiped. Then they might re-program him for another use, or take him apart and recycle him."

His heart pulses as though someone just kicked it, hard. 

"But if you were to go to Atobe he might stand a chance. He'll fall under scientific research, which Atobe is allowed to conduct as long as it does not violate or endanger other humans and their environment," Jiroh looks at him, hard. "You have to talk to Atobe."

His hands seem pale and fragile on the table between them. Bluish veins crisscross the backs of his hands. "I'm not sure he'll agree to go," he admits.

Jiroh reaches and takes his hand. The touch is warm and solid. "Ryou. By the time he will agree it might be too late."

"He's human," Shishido tells him. "I can't treat him like an object!"

"You've got to!" Jiroh hisses. "Don't you get it? If you don't then others will. If he's human then he can die."

Snatching his hand away, Shishido stands up. "Don't!" he snarls softly. 

Brown eyes stare up at him. All happiness from earlier seems to have left them. "Please. Don't you see it might be better? For the both of you, if he goes?"

Shishido looks at him, eyes narrowing.

Jiroh ploughs on. "You're getting too attached to him. Almost as if you're in-" he stops there, abruptly.

"As if I'm what?" Shishido growls.

Jiroh closes his eyes, breathes in. Opens them again. "Ryou.  _Please_."

Already he's backing away, "I gotta go," he mutters.

He runs.


	5. Part 5

However you interpret that night, it pulled down a certain wall between them.

There's closeness between them that wasn't there before, a sense of comfort and ease in touching one other. So when Choutarou puts his hand at the nape of Shishido's neck, thumb rubbing, Shishido offers him a watery smile.

"Let's have it," Choutarou says, drawing away to lean against the kitchen counter.

Hopping up on the table, Shishido faces him for a long time. His legs swing restlessly. One of his feet has a bandaid on it, from when he kicked into a chair a few days ago. He didn't put it there. The chill of the night has made way for a warm breeze coming in through the wide-open window. It ruffles his hair.

Strange how the absence of that wall changes everything. Choutarou and he have been reaching, blindly. But when they figured out they could reach for each other and meet in the middle it made way for… equality. Now his silence no longer upsets Choutarou, who just stands there and waits for him to talk. Slowly he begins to relay his conversation with Jiroh, the warnings Oshitari gave him, his own thoughts. The other listens, lets him rant.

It takes longer than he thought, first one hour, then two, then a long silence.

"So you do think I have a soul," Choutarou states, thoughtfully.

Shishido tosses him an annoyed look. "I thought that was kinda obvious."

Shoulders rise and fall. "How would I know? Maybe I am just a result of clever programming."

"Do you really believe that?" Shishido says.

"No," Choutarou admits. "I don't."

"Well then," Shishido counters. "My point exactly; what do we do now?"

"I have a choice in this?" Choutarou's voice is hushed and his eyes worried.

"Yes."

That's all he needs to say. He knows: he can shut Choutarou down right here and now. Or he could command him to open his chest and they could both have a look at how Choutarou works on the inside. He took him apart and put him together again. He broke the law making a machine. A robot. An android.

It doesn't matter anymore. It's that simple. Choutarou is here now. Not Kon. 

He waits as Choutarou lapses into silence. In the late afternoon light, everything kindled in a hazy amber. The sun is warming up enough for Shishido to feel it through the fabric of his t-shirt, he breathes in deeply, knowing that whatever gets decided next will determine both their lives forever.

Choutarou is looking out through the window over Shishido's head, feeling the unfurling warmth of the season on his face the way Shishido has it resting on his back. Sometimes he looks a little young, younger than Shishido does. Not much. A year, maybe two, but not more. Now he seems older, the way the light catches his eyes and hair, draws his features into contrast.

"Is it selfish of me to decide that it's worth the risk?" Choutarou murmurs, more to himself than to Shishido. "To stay here with you?"

"I'm down with it," Shishido says.

"We don't know how you'll be punished if they find out about me," Choutarou whispers.

Shishido tilts his head. "But we do know what they'll do to  _you_  when they find out."

Wiped. Destroyed. Recycled. Killed.

A nod. Then a shrug. They look at one other. Shishido feels his throat screw shut with every passing second. 

"I'm down with that," Choutarou repeats, mouth twitching.

Shishido closes his eyes. He can't figure out whether he's happy or sad. The sensation is too much to take in. So he concentrates on the sun-lit, tiny kitchen, the tiny apartment and the two of them in it.

"We should get a bigger place," he says instead.

***

Compared to his old apartment, it's  _huge_.

In reality it is only moderately sized. But it has two rooms. Two separate rooms.

Shishido was perfectly aware of this when he signed the papers. But when they sleep in the two very separate rooms for the first night, Shishido realizes they are just that. Separate.

He sleeps poorly.

***

There's not much to unpack. 

His old place was starting to get a little crowded by the end, but here it is all spread out too much. Wide-open plains of nothingness. It needs a couch most of all, maybe some stuff to stick on the wall besides Shishido's Star Wars posters. It's nice. Wooden paneling makes it look perpetually cozy and warm. The walls are off-white, clean and not cracked. They have a large balcony and a nice view of the city, as well as a huge park within walking distance. There are street courts in the park also.

There's a bath. Turned out just perfect to ease his screaming muscles when they carried the little stuff he had up there all by themselves. Choutarou loves it, too, and Shishido often sees wrinkly fingertips as remaining evidence of his indulgence in this when he comes back from work.

An easel takes up one corner and shelving near it holds mismatching glasses and cups of pencils, felt-tips and brushes and a bazillion different kinds of paint and coloring tools. The other corner holds the old blue heater, but also a fan. Both of them take turns burning or wiring. The weather is still undecided. 

In the evening they drag one of the futons to the living room and camp out together until it is time to go to bed.

It is nice.

It would be perfect.

If only he could sleep.

He never really thought about it much ever since he bought Choutarou a futon. They've been sleeping in the same room for a month. Barely? Somehow he got used to the breathing of another person close-by, of another presence within reach as he slept, during that short time.

After a week, he's bleary-eyed and in a constant state of exhaustion.

He yawns when he rolls from under the blankets and yawns his way through breakfast, sometimes synchronized with Choutarou's, which makes them laugh. Yawns when he drives to work on his motorcycle -fogging up the shield and causing him to nearly hurtle into a tree. Yawns some more when he pokes at number Six, almost finished now, a crappy job if there ever was one. Hides behind a yawn when he runs into Oishi in the cafeteria at lunch, ignoring his pleading eyes. Blocks out Oshitari's useless prattling by yawning, over and over.

Comes back home yawning.

He stifles them when they sit at the table together, Shishido with rice and pickled vegetables steaming in a bowl, the two of them leaning over a furniture catalogue. Choutarou knows what his salary is, what number his bank account reads. Shishido doesn't question it when he says some are too expensive and others a possibility, but maybe this store has better options. He's better with that kinda stuff, instead of Shishido who'd just buy it heedless of what tomorrow might bring and what bills with it.

They spend the whole evening debating and weighing one option over the other, arguing colors: 'red!' against 'wouldn't a neutral light gray or brown be better?' -Choutarou wins that one- and comparing prices until they both find something they like.

It's a little more expensive than Choutarou wanted, but two days later they have the couch in the middle of the living room. It takes up a lot of space. But finally it looks like they can start living there instead of camping. The thing is pretty big and a muted gray, the sort that matches everything.

"Now we just need a Playstation," Shishido says.

Choutarou rolls his eyes. "We'd need a TV first."

"Oh yeah."

He's happy and tired and crawls into his futon gratefully that night, convinced that this is the night he'll finally sleep. 

After four hours of staring at the ceiling and seriously considering whether Glow in the Dark stars are a little too silly for someone his age, Shishido isn't convinced anymore. He gives up and droops into the living room. Makes blooming tea and finds the couch. He wilts into a huddle in the corner, legs drawn to his chest, knees hard knots against his chin as he hugs them. The clock read three in the morning, witching hour. Shishido stares at the steam curling in mindless patterns from the teapot, lids heavy.

At four something warm settles against his side, leaning. He falls asleep a minute later.

They keep up the charade for four days, with Shishido lasting an hour less every night before making for the couch. The fifth day they just keep sitting together on the damn thing, sheepish. If Shishido'd detract another hour form their elaborate pantomime they'd wind up right now.

He's too ashamed to say it out loud. It's kinda lame when he thinks about it, too.

So he's grateful for Choutarou opening his mouth and saying: "We should move the futons to the same room. Use the second room for storage and your desk. I think it would work better. Don't you?"

Shishido nods, frantically. "Good plan," he says.

They move everything around the same night. Neighbors scream and pound the walls. It takes three hours, but after those the futons are in one, all the rest in the other.

The distance is perfect. A long stretch of a reach between them, but not at either side of the room. A lamp between them, some books. 

When they settle down, Shishido can see Choutarou curl to his side and close his eyes in the faint haze from the streetlights. He tucks a hand against his face, still, and lets out a long sigh. His other hand is between them on the tatami, fingers unfurled as though beckoning.

Shishido doesn't sleep so well that night, after all.

He spends the night watching instead.

***

It's summer when things change.

Or maybe nothing really does, but for Shishido the world gets turned upside down and inside out.

He comes back from his habitual run in the evening, skin damp and sweat dripping down the ridge of his spine and into the elastic of his shorts, which clings wet and low on his hips. Blood rushes through him and he feels as though he's floating when he walks into the apartment.

Orange shadows bathe the living room. It's empty. But water patters in the bathroom, the spray of a shower going full blast. He waits, patting the dribbles of perspiration from his temples with a towel, mopping his nape with it. Stands around and attempts to clear clutter away, but making more instead.

He's hot and sticky and wet and he just wants a damn shower. Shishido frowns and sighs. He's never gotten a hang of that 'patience is a virtue' thing.

He's looking at a new painting Choutarou is getting on with, something with bold lines and a lot of red.

The bathroom door opens and Shishido turns, mouth opening to say something.

He never says it. 

Choutarou is in the act of wrapping a towel around his hips and falters. For a moment his body is a clean, unbroken line of skin. It can't be more than a second, or two, or rather three of his heartbeats before it stops -his heart- just like that. Then they both start, Choutarou tucking the towel closed, apologizing profusely and Shishido shies back hysterically when he takes a step closer.

The apartment isn't that big. Shishido bumps into the low table, hard, and unbalances. He puts out a hand to steady himself as he turns, enough for his shins to scrape down the edge of the wooden surface and for him to put out an arm to catch himself. It plants right in the middle of a tiny teacup, which shatters under the weight of his palm, his arm, his body.

By the time he can conclude he's not broken his neck, Choutarou is hauling him upright. His hand leaves a bloody print on the wood, white shards like bones in the middle of it. He pulls away, or tries to, but the hands on his biceps are stronger than he is and pushing doesn't help either, because a piece of teacup that is lodged in his palm gets wedged deeper when he presses against that chest.

"Let go!" he yells. He doesn't recognize his own voice.

"Calm down!" Choutarou yells right back.

Shishido bares his teeth and shoves at him, uncaring that the blood suddenly dribbles in a steady stream down his arm when he does. It pools to a halt into his armpit, drips down into his shirt. They bloom like red roses where to fabric absorbs them.

Choutarou lets him go, appalled.

"What are you doing?" he demands, voice hoarse. Angry.

He doesn't answer, but hastens into the kitchen, thumb and index wrapped around his wrist. His right wrist, dammit. Under the blast of the faucet, the blood vanishes from the wound. The pressure stabs and Shishido hisses. The shard is in deep, it sticks out all wrong, a white slash across his palm. His lips tremble, bloodless.

Choutarou comes into the kitchen with a first aid kit and Shishido doesn't think of how they went out and bought that together, or how he insisted that they'd get it and Shishido just rolled his eyes and smiled.

"Let me help," Choutarou says. It's edged around the syllables, harsh. Then, gentler, he adds, "Please."

Fair hair is in his face when Choutarou bends over the ruined center of his right hand. His fingers twitch uncontrollably, even though it is being held steady. His heart stutters in protest when he sways a little, head dipping closer to Choutarou. He smells nice.

Shishido blinks at that, that there could be a scent to him beyond soap or anything artificial. Yet there is, something that cannot be described, something irrevocably human and unique. His mouth shudders parted on an inhale and he wonders whether he'd taste something, too, if he leaned in.

The idea makes him jerk, violently, to get away from it and everything. Choutarou just had taken hold of the shard and his unbelievably stupid move dislodges it. He screams, something caught on the serrated edge, and the blood wells up anew. Before him, white as chalk, Choutarou stares at the shard.

Blood drips on the floor between them.

When it gets cleaned a second time it doesn't look all that bad. Almost innocent enough to make Shishido wonder where all the blood came from. The gash is red and gleams slick on the insides. Thick layers of skin curl as it dries. It feels as though his arm is on fire and everything pulses angrily kinda like if his heart decided to relocate for the occasion or he grew a second one there.

"You have to go to the hospital," Choutarou breathes, voice upset and strangled. There's blood on his cheek and at his temple, where he thoughtlessly brushed hair away. "This will need stitches."

Shishido makes his fingers stretch and doesn't wince at the knife-sharp pull he feels in the center of his hand.

Two larges ones cup is own, oh so carefully. "Stop that, let me bind it a-and then... we need to call someone."

The white bandaging spots red as it gets wrapped around. They stand close. Shishido stares at the chest before him, at the red smear on the left side he made. He looks up and their faces nearly brush because that's just how close they exactly are.

Choutarou smiles at him, unhappy. "Humans are so fragile," he says.

Humans.

He's an android.

Shishido burns. His hand, yes, but deeper, too, in an awfully base sort of way and everything is all  _wrong_.

His lips move.

Choutarou is so very close that he inhales the very breath on which he utters the first word. His eyes widen, hurt now, too, in a less visible way than Shishido is.

 

Betrayed.

Then he shuts down.

***

He doesn't cry.

It's all under control now.

Next day he goes to work on an empty stomach, because he cannot bear to enter the kitchen just yet. Not with dried blood on the floor and a deactivated android left where he…  _it_  was.

He goes to Oishi instead, distant and aloof. It does need stitches and Shishido watches, detached, as the needle plunges in at one side, crosses the gap and reappears at the other side. Neat, even. Clean. The wound closes up, tight and red. It will leave a scar, but it will heal. All wounds heal.

Eiji stands to the side, eyes huge and a little too knowing.

It's easy to ignore something that isn't really real. It is.

He thanks Oishi, bowing just enough and all polite, before leaving without another word.

It is.

Even when there's a snide: "You're a coward." tossed at the back of his head.

Shishido closes the door and walks away.

***

He's doing fine. 

He works, he eats and after he finds a solution, sleeps. The apartment is spacious with just him in it. That's fine, he likes it that way.

Nothing (not nobody) stops him from buying a TV and the newest playstation a week later. He plays games, late into the night sitting cross-legged on the nice gray couch. The stuff that doesn't belong to him (it doesn't really belong to anyone, actually) he ignores. His eyes slide over the small marks, traces, hints that have been left, unseeing and deaf to their little shout-outs for reason.

Nor can he make himself touch… it, where it still is halted mid-motion, strangely enough, and not inanimate as it ought to become. After two days of having to live with the knowledge of those open eyes, he throws a dishtowel over it, hiding the sole witness of his cowardice.

Then again, what does it matter when it's not real anyway?

It doesn't, that's what.

***

Number Six is finished.

Everybody gathers around to watch him activate it, months behind schedule as he was, curious. Even the androids drift in to watch, empty moving shells following strings of code. Shishido doesn't mind. Not even Hiyoshi and Kite standing at either side of him, laser guns drawn, bothers him. Only Oshitari and his dark eyes do, where he leans against the wall and watches Shishido, not the android.

Shishido curls his fingers around the disfigured center on the palm of his right hand. It pulls a little, but Oishi politely informed him that the strain would ease when he took the stitches out. It is not yet a scar. Shishido does not doubt that it will, because all wounds heal.

The figure is laid out on the table, average height, average size, average looks. Brown hair and when the lids will peel back brown eyes.

"Six," he says, voice strong with the command. "Activate."

Nothing happens.

There's some shuffling. Niou coughs behind his hand, eyes shifty. Inui's glasses gleam and Yanagi purses his lips. At either side of his, the guns waver. Oshitari just looks on.

Shishido clears his throat. The fingers of his right hand twitch, spasmodically. "Six," he says, loud and clear. "Activate."

Nothing at all.

Something in him snaps. "Goddammit, ACTIVATE!" he roars and slams both fists into the table.

Nothing.

Taking a deep breath, Shishido gets a hold of himself. His hand trembles, both of them, but when he uncurls them he sees that the scab has come off on the right one. It bleeds a little.

Oshitari is the first one to speak: "Probably just a faulty connection," he says, pushing away from the wall and walking out. Not before adding: "Funny how Six rather resembles you, ne?"

Mouth dry, he realizes he's right. It's not even another dumb quip of his. The thing on the table does look like him, if a watered down version.

Niou whistles, "Creepy," and then slinks out, too. The rest of them follows.

Shishido is left alone, staring at the android that looks like him, sick to his stomach.

***

That night, he dreams.

He is in a glass box, sleeping. His eyes are closed but somehow he can see. People pass by and look at him, curious. As if he's on display.

Jiroh comes to see him. He raps a knuckle on the glass and says, "Ryou, you have to wake up." Then he falls asleep.

Shishido lies there, unmoving. It's a little cold and he wonders if this is all there is. Years pass by. Shishido never moves, he's alone in his glass box, laid out like a corpse in a coffin, hands crossed over his stomach, neat and tide. He's cold because he has no clothes. 

There's a layer of dust on the glass pane above him. It piles up and up until he can see nothing but the little light that filters through it which moves like water does, rippling, only he's dry. Oshitari passes by, and Shishido knows it's him because he draws a heart on the glass pane, clearing the dust away as he drags his finger, and there's dark hair and glasses. He raises a hand to his lips, secretive.

But he leaves, too.

So he waits more. He waits for a very long time. The heart gets filled in again, until there's just dust, centimeters of it piled up. Like he never had one at all. But it is there, he can feel it pumping in his chest, real.

Oishi comes then, he drags his hand in a broad swipe and leaves a window for Shishido to look out through. He's completely covered in dust Shishido sees. Gray and ill-looking. But he smiles and says: "There you are, Shishido! You look a bit tired, have you been sleeping?"

I never sleep, Shishido wants to tell him, but he can't because he's not supposed to: eyes closed and never moving.

"Oshitari says you need to be kissed awake, like in a fairy tale," Oishi tells him. "I will go and see if I can find someone who wants to!"

He smiles.

Shishido tries to shake his head, say:  _No…_  but he can't move.

Eiji is wearing a little crown when he comes to see him. He peers through the swathe of cleared dust and shakes his head: "Ew, no!" he exclaims, nose scrunching. He leaves then and Shishido lies there, never sleeping.

Other people visit him, too. Sometimes they wear a crown, but most of the time they don't. All leave.

Atobe comes, wearing a crown so huge it blocks out the very skies. "Don't put out until the third date, Shishido!" he advises him. "And wear a tie."

Nobody comes after that. His heart beats the countdown, every pump a pump less in his life, a beat lost. He's running out of time. He's running out of life. He doesn't sleep. His eyes are closed. He's already in the coffin that will bear him to his grave, prepared. Nobody will ever come.

But then someone comes, late, too late, stumbling to an exhausted halt. Shishido sees him with his closed eyes, the tall man with fair hair. He lifts the lid of the glass box, instead of just peering through it. Sunlight caresses his face. The man is wearing no crown, his body is as bare as Shishido's is.

Choutarou leans over him, hand feeling for his chest. 

Shishido's heart knocks up into greeting, saying hello.

"Shishido-san," he says. Fingers reach for his chin, like in the stories: holding it between thumb and index. They tilt his jaw, his face, for a better angle, exposing his mouth. His lips.

Then he kisses him.

His mouth is warm and just right. The contact is a question, shy and sweet, just a press before he withdraws and just  _breathes_.

Shishido breathes back.

Finds that he can open his eyes and move, so he reaches for Choutarou's face to kiss him again.

Their mouths meet, slick and soft, again and again. Shishido aches for him and pulls him closer, and closer, hands splayed over his back and arching to be as close to him as he can. Their chests brush and Shishido's heart pounds, thick and swollen with blood. When their lips part, it's even warmer, and better and Shishido opens his mouth to have him, taste him and he's awake and alive and smiling against that mouth.

"Ryou," Choutarou whispers and then accepts his invitation.

His tongue is careful inside of his mouth, brushing carefully up against his own, then the roof and ridge of his teeth, suffusing his mouth with his presence and warmth. Then, carefully, he sucks on it. It feels good. Intimate.

Then it feels more moist, wet, when Choutarou draws it into his own mouth. The pull gets stronger, tight and demanding. Shishido's head gets tipped back, held between two hands.

He can't move and the pull, the suck on his mouth, starts to  _hurt_.

 _Please_ , he wants to say.  _Stop, it hurts. You're hurting me._

His throat hitches and strains.

 _Choutarou_.

Shishido screws his eyes tight shut and screams, inside his head, when he feels his heart hitch, too. His head falls back under the pressure. It hurts, so damn much, when his heart pounds, hard and then slithers up into his throat. His gullet strains around the bulge of the pumping thing as it travels up, splitting apart at the seams, before it lands at the back of his throat, pulsing. It's there, he feels, beating in fear on his tongue, all purple and huge and moist, choking him.

It scrapes blood against the back of his teeth when it is pulled away there, out of his body, and arteries snap in a spray of blood. It floods his mouth, so he also drowns then, as he dies. 

He falls back, dead, chest a vast void, and his lifeless eyes see number Six licking his bloody lips, teeth white as he chews.

 

Shishido comes awake with a scream caught in his throat. He can't make it, can't make any sound, so he dry-heaves, curled over his chest, hands clutching at his own heartbeat.

The room is dark, and humid.

His pants are like footsteps in the echoing silence. His fingers seek his own skin and find that pulse-point and his heart reaches back to assure him of its presence, as if to seek comfort itself.

When he lays back, the pillow is damp.

 _Just my sweat_ , Shishido tells himself and presses his soaked cheek into the soaked fabric.

***

As is just his luck, Shishido runs into Sanada on his way up. Dark eyes meet his for a moment, unreadable. Then he marches out of the elevator.

Unlike last time, Atobe is alone in his office. And when he takes his seat, it's just the two of them. Unease hangs like a greasy cloud of exhaust fumes between them. Shishido shifts, waits for Atobe to say something. He's expected nothing less but the usual finger-thick infuriating smugness and if not that, the glow that was there when he and Jiroh circled one other on a marble dance floor.

Instead he sees tired lines on his face and something akin to hesitation. It's not that, can't be, because as Atobe is Atobe and he never needs to hesitate. Whatever it may be, one thing remains unaltered: Atobe's eyes boring into his, fearless.

Shishido looks back, steady.

"Shishido," he begins, tone that of someone that wields authority and is about to wield it on Shishido's ass right now.

Before he can stop himself, Shishido braces, ready to fight back.

Atobe sees it. His eyes flash once dangerously but leave them just as quickly as it came. He closes them for a moment and when his lashes lift Shishido finds himself looking at a very old friend of his.

"Ryou," he says, an exhale. "What's going on?"

Something in side of him lets go, too. "I'm doing my best," Shishido says.

He is… but. Nobody gets it, not just him. In all essence number Six is perfect. There is no faulty connection, no core algorithm missing. All the hardware and software that needs to be there,  _is_  there. But nobody, not him, Inui, Yanagi or Niou can get it to start. Not even to make it run on standard Tannhauser programming.

It doesn't make sense.

"I know that," Atobe says. "But that is not what I am asking."

Shishido frowns.

"You. What is going on with you?" Atobe asks. "You come in and work, yes, but there's isn't anybody home though the lights are on. It's worse than half a year ago, when you looked tired and malnourished. You look healthy but you aren't." 

"I am fine," Shishido says. "I feel good."

"You don't," Atobe counters and bares his teeth to silence his instant protest. "Oishi has voiced his concerns about whichever methods… or combination of, you are using to fall asleep."

"There's nothing wrong with me!" Shishido insists, pricked.

"You're such a fool," Atobe says, shaking his head. "Fine then, you leave me no choice. Take a vacation, Ryou. A long one. We will see about your position within the company when you've recovered."

The inside of his body seems to become liquid shock, dripping down to a cold, freezing puddle in the pit of his stomach. He feels hollowed out, as if a metaphorical ice-scream scoop scrapes his insides out. His throat bobs.

An almost kind expression crosses over Atobe's face. "I am not firing you. I'm not even altering your salary. I'm just taking you off the AI project and relocating you to another department." 

Even though he's felt his interest and passion for the project waning, the idea of being taken away from it is inconceivable. "I can try harder," he promises. "I can do better."

"You can," Atobe agrees. "That is why I am relocating you. We were a part of a team once, Ryou. And I don't forget."

Shishido stares at him, uncomprehending, shaking his head unwillingly.

"You are dismissed," Atobe tells him. 

After just sitting there for quite a while and it becomes clear this is no joke, Shishido rises, shaken. Stands there.

"Ryou," Atobe adds. "Go home."

***

Home.

Shishido looks around.

It's the last place he wants to be. He moved here for the wrong reasons. This is just a place he is staying at. For now. 

Just being there raises his hackles. He can't rest his eyes anywhere without seeing something wrong, wrong all so very wrong. When he moves about the place he has a set trajectory he walks along, the path where he encounters the least anomalies. The table has magazines spread all over it, hiding the dark red smear on its surface. But the kitchen… that's the worst. There's no way to move it without touching it or activating it and both are awful, hideous options for different reasons. Ignoring it is all he can do, for now.

But it's there, forever caught in that sweet, protective gesture, hands cupped together to hold something that isn't there anymore.

Even when he lies on his futon he can feel it there.

Shishido tosses and turns.

Not even the towel that's been draped over it long enough to go gray with dust helps. Always, that skin-crawling feeling that he's being watched, followed, never alone in his empty apartment. He'll be bending over an article in his favorite magazine and it'll be there, right behind him, close enough he expects to feel the ice-cold caress of it against the nape of his neck, down his spine. Or he'll turn in terror, knowing, just knowing it's there, watching him with the wide-dead eyes of betrayal, and see an empty room.

He fights it, resents it, wishes he could just do something about to make it all stop.

But he doesn't, because at the darkest hour before dawn, when he's too exhausted and heartsick to care, he can give in to the strange comfort that presence gives him.

***

His days are aimless, void of any meaning.

Shishido works out, plays video games, eats. Feels more tired than ever. 

There's no tennis.

***

All he can manage is to wake up every morning and even that requires inhuman effort. Exhaustion drags him down, steel claws dug into his person. The calendar on his desk has a few days crossed out on it, but not anymore now. Shishido sees no use in keeping track of it.   

He's no idea whether it is two or three days after he gets send of 'on extended leave', or two or three weeks. It seems like forever, but the summer has barely begun. But then Jiroh is standing before his door one afternoon, livid.

Shishido opens the door and is confronted with a small thundercloud. If small thunderclouds can be relatively short and harmless looking, topped off with blonde curls and backed by the wholesome glow of a summer's day.

"What have you done to him?" he asks, voice low.

Shishido inches the door closed to a crack, his body firmly inserted in the small gap. "To who?"

Jiroh takes one step, hand whipping out. The door flies open with a bang, scratching the wooden paneling. Shishido splutters. He doesn't even take off his shoes when he strides inside, so he splutters some more.

Then, he demands: "Where?" 

"Get out!" Shishido hisses. It's no use, but he rushes after him, frantic. "Get the fuck out!"

They struggle, Jiroh moving about, searching, Shishido holding him back, fingers harsh on his friend's arms.

The apartment isn't that big. Jiroh sees the tall figure almost instantly. " _Oh_ ," he goes, like a knife just slid between his shoulder blades.

Shishido's hands trail lifelessly from his arms when Jiroh moves towards him. He goes numb, detached. He doesn't even feel a thing when he witnesses Jiroh drawing the dirty towel away, leaving a tall, bare person standing there, with only yet another towel around his hips.

"Oh Choutarou," Jiroh whispers. Slowly he slips one of his own hands -his right hand- between the two cupped ones, palm-up. It's a wrong fit. It doesn't seem to make him think differently of him, of Choutarou, even when he's deactivated for the first time ever since Jiroh met  _him_.

Shishido feels nothing, not even the throb of the wound on his right hand. But he does look away, stomach heaving threateningly, when Jiroh lifts his hand and uses his middle and index fingers to close Choutarou's lids. Like closing the eyes of a dead man.

When he turns to Shishido, his lip is curled in disgust. "You're better than this. He's better than  _that_ -" 

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Shishido screams, so abrupt he startles himself. "Huh? You're the one who said that I ought to distance myself from it! You're the one who-"

"It?" Jiroh interrupts with a scoff. "I'd never have pinned you for a coward, Ryou."

"Did Atobe send you?" Shishido demands.

"I sent myself," Jiroh says, eyes rolling. "What does it even matter? What does it matter when you've got him there, like this? Dammit, either suck it up and take him to Tannhauser or get a grip and deal with it. I  _warned_  you. This will end in tears -it will! But either way you've gotta do  _something_. You did this. You bear the responsibility for it even if it destroys you, if it hasn't already."

"Don't tell me what to do!" he snarls. "You don't know-"

"I don't?" Jiroh says, voice slipping sharply around the intonation. "I knew. From the first time I saw you two together, I knew. Play the dumb fool, if you like, and pretend like there's nothing. But out of respect for him, Ryou, you have to. To Tannhauser then. If that makes you happy. Just-" he shakes his head, the gesture more than just disapproval.

With that he walks out of the kitchen, face ashen. Not looking at him. At the door he pauses, tilting his head towards the living room. "It's okay to be afraid," he says. "But not like this."

He doesn't close the door.

Shishido can hear him walking down the hallway, to the stairs and leave.

***

Unlike other people, Shishido needs to be on his knees in the dirt, disgraced, before he can start to climb.

It's happened before. Never it is pretty. Always it pushes him face down, humiliated and with all that's wrong about him out in the open. And there it leaves him, to fend for himself. Every time Shishido manages to get up, walk over and shove back.

This time, too.

It just takes him very long.

He  _is_  frightened.

Terrified.

He doesn't understand how Oishi and Eiji can  _stand_  it.

When he forces himself to look at the truth, it's almost… sick. Wrong. He thinks that, then, but in his heart he doesn't feel the same. Then again what does his stupid heart matter when the machine standing before him is more human than he turns out to be.

And what does anything matter when Jiroh said that Tannhauser was the only option and every single particle of Shishido's being screamed that it isn't an option at all. Which leaves him here, in the kitchen.

He stands before Choutarou and looks at him. That's all he can stand to do for hours. It's a punishment of sorts, twisting the knife in chest with his own two hands.

As the sun sinks below the lip of the horizon, Shishido leaves to fetch a blanket. Then he stands there, clutching it to himself, eyes fastened on the closed lids.

Night settles in, heavy. Moonlight shines silver, spilling through the kitchen window. It spills around the curve of Choutarou's cheek, utterly beautiful. Shishido hurts, even now, with just this. The world slows down, slumbering, and in the absence of everything else, Shishido finds the words. First slowly, hesitatingly, but then like a dam worn away faster and faster, a trickle, a stream, a river, a waterfall, an ocean that empties in the silence, everything he's known but never looked at.

It hurts to speak, near the end. His throat feels like sandpaper, swallowing impossible.

The moon is a fading disk in the early skies, the last minutes before dawn when he's finally finished. By then he can barely say what matters most of all.

Two words. 

Never again, Shishido swears.

"Choutarou…" he whispers, voice worn. "Activate."

 

He had no delusions.

When those eyes open it's with the exhale of his betrayal still resting on Choutarou's tongue. 

The offered blanket is ignored. Choutarou looks at him, just once, and then walks away.

***

Worst of all is the distance. The wall.

He knew that, of course.

The presence of it is all the more so painfully obvious after its absence. That and it's twice as tall, as vast and as barb-wired as ever before.

Choutarou doesn't touch him. At all.

Before it happened unconsciously, when passing one other, taking or giving something, lending a helping hand. Normal. Gestures that always happen between humans, even between complete strangers. Never longer than a second and no lingering impressions, even. That was  _before_.

Yet even that doesn't happen.

Combined with the physical closeness they had, the natural reaching out and taking, his aching for it is a constant sear in his chest.

But he doesn't touch back.

***

They talk, a little.

"Anything you'd like to watch tonight?"

"I am going out for a run."

"I'll get that."

"Do you mind if I open the window?"

Shishido'd add an 'I'm sorry' to it if he'd thought it might help. But what would being sorry matter when it's the trust between them that lies in tatters? It's not something that can be fixed with an apology.

So they move around each other, carefully. Choutarou plays on his violin a lot. Hauntingly sad melodies, hours on end, often Shishido will  _have_  to leave the place for a while, left with no other choice than that or break down himself. That's the most emotion he gets from the other who's taken to sitting on the balcony for all the  _other_  hours, staring out of the bustling city from behind the metal bars, in complete silence.

Shishido fears he's broken him, somehow. In worse ways than he can imagine. Choutarou is and remains an android, but he's too human for this to be fixable.

It's not an error in his code, or a lack of anything.

He watches him watch the world, trapped by what he is, by the restrictions chaining him down forever.

And then he gets an idea.

***

All androids come Three Laws safe. By the law all activated, or those meant for integration in human society must be. At Tannhauser it's standard procedure to program the Three Laws of Robotics first, before anything else is. It's their guarantee.

_1\. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm._

_2\. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law._

_3\. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law._

***

They're standing on the balcony.

It's warm and humid, even with the evening settling in. The horizon is a smudge of pinkish hues, with star-speckled night at the furthest edge. Choutarou's hair curls damply against his neck and his throat gleams. It still hurts, watching him, but now he understands it's not fear. Not really. It's something worse than that.

And Shishido thinks he might be alright with that. Not that he has much of a choice. It's a part of him as much as his heartbeat is, now. So doing this makes perfect sense, in a way. It's been a week since he re-activated him. He walks up to him into last sun of the day, feeling much more himself than he has before. Impulsive and reckless, kinda, even though he did think about this. 

"Hey," he murmurs.

Choutarou turns slightly, eyes lingering on the scenery before them a little longer, reluctant to let it go. "Hey," he returns. His mouth moves and it looks like a smile. It's a perfectly polite one. His eyes are unreadable, distant.

"I won't command you to," Shishido says. "But I am asking… might I…" it sounds so odd, kind of dirty even and both aren't really gonna work right now. So he holds out the cable, laptop under his arm.

There's revulsion for a moment, but then he shrugs. "As you wish," he says, bobbing his head. His voice is kind, smooth, but the bitterness is all in his eyes. Quite unrepentantly he begins to unbutton his shirt, even when Shishido has to swallow thickly and drop his eyes.

How can it be so new, can it fascinate him so completely when he made that? And didn't even make it that way to please himself, personally,  _like that_.

They sit opposite of one other, the laptop between them and the cable coiled nearby. Choutarou is shrugging the fabric off his shoulders even as the flawless skin splits across his chest to let the hatch open.

Shishido finds it doesn't bother him. All that stings is that Choutarou doesn't even care enough to ask why, just does it, like he's not human enough to have a choice in the matter. It's kinda like an extra slap in the face, though a deserved one.

It almost makes him smile, to see inside of him like this again. Deja vu and yet not, like he had nothing to do with this miracle at all. In all essence, he didn't.

"Tell me if I hurt you," Shishido breathes and reaches inside.

Choutarou's brows arch a little, in an odd vulnerable gesture as he watches Shishido's right hand disappear into his chest, up to the wrist. As if ashamed. Shishido watches him closely as he feels for the interface that'll grant him access to both drives. Only his lips tremble when he connects, a click they can both hear. A green led winks on and Choutarou swallows convulsively, the dying sun catching the bob of his adam's apple.

Shishido realizes that maybe he thinks he's about to die, too.

That he'd  _let_  him, scares Shishido most of all.

They don't speak when Shishido pulls his laptop onto his crossed legs and begins to click and scroll through files and codes, essentially picking Choutarou's very brain apart. And his soul. Choutarou keeps staring at the cable leading into his open chest, like you can't resist watching the needle dig into the skin when getting an injection.

What he looks for is a programmed onto both drives, the one located in the skull and his heart-drive, for extra security. It's standard procedure. It takes the ugliest hack out there to delete it, both of them, and Shishido uses it.

A task bar pops up on his screen, filling up. There's a sound event of something being deleted. As plain and quick as that, Choutarou's Three Law Safety clause is gone.

Shishido doesn't look at him when he reaches inside to disconnect again, resting one hand gently against his bare ribs as he tugs the cable loose. With finality he closes the hatch, too, letting his fingertips linger until the lines are gone. Then he lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and begins to roll the cable.

Before him, Choutarou's jaw hangs open rather comically, staring at the crown of Shishido's head as he realizes what he just did. He still sits there, shellshocked, when he gets up with his laptop and steps inside, wordless.

He's making himself some popcorn when Choutarou steps through the sliding doors and walks up to him.

"What you just did has the penalty of death on it," he whispers.

Shishido turns to face him, reclining against the counter top. Choutarou looks at him as though the world as he has come to know it, doesn't exist. For all intents and purposes, it doesn't anymore. He narrows his eyes and crosses his arms, and nods.

"Choutarou," he says, deliberately loud and haughty. "Shut down."

 

Choutarou reaches for him instead.

***

The rest comes naturally.

Having made Choutarou as human as he can makes more difference than he expected it would. Never before had he any idea just how much of what he said to Choutarou was influenced by the Three Laws and as such his responses and behavior towards Shishido, in return.

He can't remember when anybody last looked at him like that. He doesn't think anyone ever has.

They still don't touch, not after that one painfully raw embrace.

So they watch each other. 

Glancing up to catch Choutarou  _looking_  at him, the way he does now, feels like being touched all the same.

They're waiting for something, what Shishido doesn't know, since nobody is going to come around and give them permission or anything. When they're at opposite sides of a net and Choutarou serves, body lean and powerful as he moves, Shishido thinks that he's waiting just for a glimpse of this: the heat making Choutarou sweat hard enough that droplets fly off the ends of his hair as he hits a return. The curve of his hip as his shirt hitches up, as sharp and territorial as the lines on the court. His teeth bared in challenge and his sharp smile when he takes a point.

It's almost… sexual, the game. Or maybe he's so gone that everything seems to be.

But the park is deserted and the courts are bathed in the floodlights and the two of them play, hard and there's  _noises_  when they do. Little growls from him, low grunts from Choutarou and their breathing, in fast loud sucks of air. Only the hollow  _twocks_  of their rackets connecting with the tennis ball breaks it up, but they're still breathing at each other, their voice in it. Shishido's lips burn from the passing of air, swollen and red and he keeps them parted.

Choutarou's eyes snag on his mouth when he dashes up to the net. Thus he takes that last point, again with his rising.

"Good game," Shishido tells him as they walk up to the net. His chest heaves and blood pounds between his ears. He can feel sweat and dirt caked into his hand, taste grime on the damp skin around his mouth.

"One day," Choutarou responds, smiling.

He seems taller than ever, Shishido's head is at an angle to meet his eyes this close.

"Keep telling yourself that," Shishido smirks at him. 

"Hmm," Choutarou goes and reaches out.

Shishido is wearing an old blue cap, keeping his face clear of hair and the glare of the floodlights and Choutarou takes the bill and twists it around.

"It's strange when I can't see your eyes," he murmurs.

It's a good thing he's red in the face from exertion or else his blush would show. It wasn't a touch, but he could feel the heat from that hand, smell the sweat. His heart flops about drunkenly. He does look to the side, but not without snorting. "Che, you gotta watch the ball, you idiot."

"I'm an android," Choutarou counters. "I'm good at multitasking."

"Right, that's why I kicked your ass just now," Shishido grins and shakes his head.

"I don't mind," Choutarou says softly. "I like playing tennis with you, Shishido-san. I… I like-" he stops, biting his lower lip.

Shishido swallows convulsively. "What?"

There's no answer. Or maybe there is, when Choutarou just looks at him and Shishido has to catch his breath.

***

Everything has changed, Shishido thinks.

Yet nothing really has.

They're still waiting. And he still watches Choutarou watch the world from behind the metal bars of their balcony. For all that Shishido is home, they can't go very far. The street courts. Some shops and supermarkets, but even those not more than once, maybe twice a month, together.

Maybe that's it, that they're caught in this strange stasis, restricted to protect both their lives. This moment captures that perfectly, another sun sinking and Choutarou sitting on the balcony looking out at the world, Shishido in the open doorway watching him in turn.

It pleases him to stand behind Choutarou and let his eyes linger over the nape of his neck, the strong angle of his shoulders and along his back, to his narrow hips. He's aglow with the warm hues, bathing his skin in a flushed orange. It still hurts to watch him. His fingers tremble with the desire to scoot in close and press his face between those shoulder blades.

Instead he sinks down cross-legged next to Choutarou, a cup of tea between his hands.

"What's on your mind?" Shishido asks, after half an hour of easy silence.

The answer comes with a minute or two of delay, but it does come, thoughtfully. "Can you swim, Shishido-san?"

Shishido nods.

Choutarou tilts his head. "Can I swim?"

"You'd sink," Shishido responds, quietly. "Your molecular density is too great."

"I thought as much," Choutarou sighs. 

"Would you've liked to?" Shishido asks.

"I think so," Choutarou murmurs. "Isn't it a little like flying?"

"I can't fly so I can't compare, but I think flying would be more exciting of the two." Shishido admits, recalling the cool glide through water, floating in a way, true, but not the wild thrill of  _freedom_  flying might bring.

"Do you often dream you can fly?" Choutarou asks, watching him thoughtfully.

"Sometimes," Shishido shrugs, then grins ruefully. "I always end up crashing. Do you? Dream of flying and all?"

Choutarou's throat works and his lashes hide most of his eyes. "I always dream about the same thing."

Taking a sip of rather cold tea, Shishido sighs, wry. "Aa. Tennis."

A soft hum. Choutarou turns his head towards him, but his gaze is shy and averted. "You should have figured out that…  _tennis_  is only a small part of what I dream about." 

He looks up, a little exasperated when Shishido goes: "Huh?" Their eyes meet and Choutarou is watching him, his eyes moving in a soft deliberate path across his face, the look in them racking shivers down his spine. Shishido gets it and starts to blush, glowing with a secret, fierce joy. "Oh," he adds, trying to keep his mouth from betraying him.

Choutarou did dream about him.

And he still does.

Right now, he thinks he knows what flying might feel like.

***

If he dreams about Shishido, then he's not having pleasant dreams about him.

At least not now.

Something wakes him in the dead of the night. The room would have been completely dark if the city wasn't always awake. There's just enough light that when Shishido pries his eyes apart it's to the vague outline of Choutarou's tossing form. A noise rises from him, frightened and haunted, which rises to a cry as he bolts up and sits there staring in blind terror, panting.

Then, in an agonizing display of humanity, he clutches at his chest and dry heaves against the wad of emotion choking him, body straining.

Shishido hoists himself up to his elbow, worried. "Hey," he whispers.

The other starts at his voice, as though that little word was a ringing gunshot, his eyes wide with terror the first few seconds, unseeing. Then they soften with dawning relief. A thick swallow. The moonlight catches his face. Choutarou looks wan and pale, damp with sweat.

"Bad dreams?" Shishido asks.

Looking away, he nods, once and harsh. He's still sitting upright, his hands a shaking knot against his lower belly. Choutarou sits there and trembles, face contorted.

The room is warm, humid. Choking. Shishido gets up and cranks the window open a slit so cool air rushes inside, easing the heavy press.

Some part of him fantasized that their first touch would be erotic, or at least romantic -just right, just perfect and so very significant- the sign for them to stop  _waiting_. It's kinda silly and kinda very lame that he thought that, rolled the image of Choutarou dipping his head towards his around on his tongue like a piece of sweet candy.

Instead it's him walking past the mussed heap of his own futon towards Choutarou's… and the brush of his fingers through tangled, moist hair.

He's no good at being soothing and murmuring the right things, so instead he takes what he knows and gives in; to himself to what they both feel. Being physically close always carried some kind of innate comfort with it and Shishido wants nothing more than be close to him now. His patience was wearing thin anyway.

There's a little sigh as he combs his fingers through Choutarou’s hair and a startled sound when Shishido sits down, pressed up to him. Their skins sticks together like wet velcro where their arms brush, their cheeks. Under his right palm the fabric is pasted to a broad back, soaked. Without a word between them, Choutarou peels it off, nose scrunching. His bare chest, the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes, the lingering gleam of exertion, how the moon catches his sharp collarbone, the muscles and further down to the teardrop of his navel- it's utterly beautiful.

Somehow he loses his shirt, too, before they lie down together.

Choutarou is heavy.

They shift and knock limbs and hard bones together and Choutarou nearly knees him in the crown jewels as they try to fit. Eventually they lie in a press of sweating skin to skin, Shishido flat on his back and Choutarou tucked against his side, head on his chest. Left side, naturally. There's a muscular thigh hooked over his own and an arm slung over his stomach. His body dwarfs Shishido's, but he finds he doesn't mind much, not when he can dig his fingers into soft hair and breathe Choutarou in, deeply.

He's flying again, though pinned down and his body thrums in response to the heat and warmth of having someone so close. How can something so simple feel so  _good_?

Lips curve into a smile, he can feel the corner of it against his skin. "It's beating very fast," Choutarou sighs, tipping his head closer still. "Like it wants to escape."

Shishido closes his eyes, pretty sure that's the last thing it wants.

 


	6. Part 6

They sleep together from then on. Mostly in a sort of puppyish heap, not necessarily embracing, just a tangle of limbs and warm bodies, breathing in perfectly synchronized unison.

There's never a touch other than comfort and ease, gentle holding. It drives him  _crazy_.

Shishido finds himself waking up in need of cold showers. His dreams are velvet dark, of cool sheets under his back and heated skin against his front. A mouth across his own and hands tangling in his hair.

The desire to take more makes him edgy and restless.

Worse is that he knows Choutarou wants more, too. Yet all they do is cuddle, and watch each other with greedy, starving eyes.

Everything will be fine one moment, they'll just be talking and Shishido will be answering something and there'll be no response because Choutarou is _staring_  at his mouth, as if deeply contemplating all the other uses it could serve besides idle conversation.

It's stupid and silly that they don't, when they both want it and it leaves Shishido half-crazed to go through longing so violent he's sick to his stomach and yet find himself frightened what it might mean if they gave in. It's remains scary. Choutarou still is what he is and everything about it is wrong. There's a law against it just as sure as there's a law against tampering with possible soul blueprints and the law that states that your ass is going down if you unleash a non-Three Laws conform android on the world.

And yet, when they curl together just so and Shishido gets to bury his face against Choutarou's hot, soft skin, everything about is right.

He wishes Choutarou would just fucking  _kiss_  him already.

 

When he does, finally, it is yet again not as he imagined it would happen.

It happens kinda unannounced and natural, no big fuss. They're in bed, Shishido flush against Choutarou's broad back, right arm tucked through the hollow of Choutarou's neck. His right hand his palm-up, unfurled as he dozes off.

And Choutarou tips his head into that palm and kisses the ravaged center of it.

Shishido manages to hyperventilate and stop breathing all at once. By the time he has harnessed enough rational brain-power to open his mouth and  _say_ something about it, Choutarou has dropped of to sleep, lips still parted on the scar.

He's left hot and squirming, wanting to gnaw in aggravation on Choutarou's shoulder, because what kind of asshole  _does_  that?

But he lies still, body aching for more, breathing in and out until the other rolls away in his sleep, leaving his arms free. Shishido doesn't move, but stares at his kissed palm in wonder, fingers curling closed carefully as if he'd like to trap it there safe and maybe to look at once in a while like you'd do with a caught butterfly.

***

It becomes a sort of game. One which's only rule seems to be: it is forbidden for this to make any fucking sort of sense at all. Oh, and maybe, let's re-visit the adolescent era of intense sexual frustration. You know the kind. Oh yeah. 

For days after Shishido'd swear he can feel that one elusive press of lips on his body. His palms tingles, as if world stopped right there in his scarred hand. Like a damn blushing teenager, he even catches himself being reluctant to wash it -what if all the traces went down the drain?  _Forever_?! That bad. The only thing that kinda tops that is he pressing his own lips there, too, curious to see if he can re-discover the taste of Choutarou's mouth. He sticks his hands under the water right after, soaping them up and telling himself that  _acting_  like one doesn't mean he is the girl.

Not. at. all.

Dammit.

The bottom line is that he cherishes that one chaste kiss, but also realizes that it was just that -a kiss on the palm of his hand. Which was given while Choutarou was admittedly very sleepy, so it might've been nearly a unconscious gesture.

So he mentally kicks his own ass when he finds himself smiling lovingly at his hand and tries to get on with his life.

But it happens again, this time with no mistake. 

Shishido is sitting at the table in the kitchen, rifling through his mail. There's a lot of junk in it, possibly misplaced by the mailman: a few travel catalogues and leaflets with airplane, train and bus info. He can't quite figure it out why it's in there, only that there's no plastic sleeve around it, nor an addressee mentioned anywhere.

As he's puzzling over it Choutarou walks by, stands by his side for a moment, jean-clad hip against Shishido's shoulder as he watches him turn pages. After a moment he stoops and presses his mouth to Shishido's forehead, sweet and intimate, before going about his business (which seems to be none at all, as he leaves the kitchen as empty-handed as he came in). Leaving him nailed to his chair by that kiss, thunderstruck as a slow, belated blush creeps up his neckline to his cheeks.

His stomach is doing somersaults, spastically churning his lunch into a mess as he walks into the living room after having sat on his chair for another half an hour before he dared to reach up and touch his forehead, disbelieving. Choutarou is on the couch with a sketchbook, studiously busy. The pencil whirls in furious lines over the paper, more so when an answering blush stains his cheeks, too, as Shishido leans in the doorway and  _looks_  at him, arms crossed and a ' _Well?_ ' pasted between his eyebrows.

It's easy to act cocky and none too impressed, but it still takes him a while before he can walk confidently into the room to go stand behind Choutarou. The pencil hitches as he rests his hands on those shoulders, thumbs ghosting up into the hair at his nape and down again, coaxingly almost. Then he presses his face there, lips catching clumsily as he imagines what else he might be doing to Choutarou other than just  _standing_  behind him as he kisses his neck. But he keeps his face there, nose rubbing before he breathes, "Don't be a tease."

Choutarou's voice is husky, thick. "I'm not teasing."

Shishido puts his head next to his, leaning over the back of the couch. "Heh. Sure."

"I'm not," Choutarou repeats, cheek bunching as he smiles a little. "Yet."

Pinching his sides leads to a rather high-pitched yip and Shishido keeps tickling him until he shrieks his submission -ticklish, how is it even possible? Choutarou grabs and hauls him over the back of the couch and they lie there, struggling and fingers seeking out vulnerable parts. Shishido starts to laugh as he sits down on his lower stomach, an excellent position to reach his ribs and sides and neck and Choutarou yells and gasps and  _giggles_  again which causes Shishido to loose his momentum as to tease him. Before he knows it he's on the receiving end and he's laughing, laughing so hard it hurts and Choutarou with him, head back and full-throated and Shishido thinks it's the most beautiful sound he's ever heard.

When they lie in a panting, muttering heap, Shishido realizes it's the first time he's ever heard him laugh.

***

The easel is angled towards the urban-ravaged panorama. It's a jagged, blackened cement outline, with neon dotting it. Yet the canvas shows misty mountains, with a glimpse of an early morning ocean between the peaks.

"Huh," Shishido goes, grinning a little. "Accurate."

Choutarou dabs his brush against his cheek, leaving a green smear. "I'm not painting Tokyo," he says.

Scrubbing with his sleeve at the paint, Shishido snorts. "Really? I wouldn't have guessed." He peers closer. It's awfully detailed for something made-up. "How'd you come up with this? It's beautiful."

The praise leaves a visible glow, but he shrugs and admits. "I saw it in one of those catalogues. Eidetic memory does the rest."

Shishido nods and steps back inside to fetch the stack of catalogues. He idly turns pages, actually reading what he sees there, eyebrows lifting. They're not even locations outside of Japan.

When he finally finds the photo Choutarou is churning out flawlessly thanks to his super-computer brain -with a few touches of his own, granted- Shishido reads the information that goes with it.

Something clicks into place.

"Would you like to go on vacation to Kōchi?"

***

"I don't know," Choutarou murmurs as they both bend over the small circled block of text. "It's kinda…" he shrugs.

"Creepy?" Shishido goes.

"Awfully convenient," Choutarou says instead. "It's like someone planned this trip out for us."

"Or maybe some loser just dropped info intended for someone else accidentally in our mailbox," Shishido counters.

"What if it is a trap?" Choutarou whispers, avoiding his eyes right then.

That makes him glance up. "For what? Us?"

When Choutarou nods, slowly, Shishido remembers that's he's in a position to be considered one of the dangerous kind of criminals out there, with Choutarou skimming the edge of 'illegal weapon of mass destruction'. It's none to far fetched either, after numerous blood-stained 'bumps' in the road of robotic sciences a non-Three Law conform android is comfortably up there in the niche of nation-wide mass hysteria.

"Well, why the hell would they bother to plan out a nice and cozy vacation when they know where we live? Instead of presenting us with brochures they'd bust in guns blazing," Shishido points out. "Shoot my brains out if I resist. Try in your case."

"That's not funny," Choutarou whispers.

"You're bullet-proof. Mostly," Shishido adds, grinning.

"Don't!" Choutarou hisses. "Don't joke about it," he says.

There's a terse silence. Shishido opens his gob to fumble out an apology that isn't one, but gets the intention across.

"I'm not talking about me being an android," Choutarou interrupts before he can embarrass himself.

Shishido's perishable, delicate human body often seems to upset Choutarou in the weirdest ways. Sighing, he taps Choutarou's ankle under the table with his foot.

"Point was we'd be dead already," Shishido says. 

They discuss the matter a little longer, but in the end Shishido gets his way and rings up the number in the contact ad. Turns out to be a small, tiny little house tucked away deep in the forests and mountains, at half an hour from a teeny tiny rural village. It's not so much for rent as it is up for sale, but the old man agrees to renting it out to them for three weeks, at a very agreeable price if they fix some minor things around the place.

It's a golden deal.

Too good to be true, almost.

***

The days leading up to their departure both of them hardly sleep.

A little of it is nerves over the whole rather odd situation. But a lot of it, most of it and in Shishido's case nearly  _all_  of it, is the marrow-deep knowledge that the waiting will  _end_  there.

Maybe that's strange or weird, that they'd need to go someplace for this to happen, what they both want most.

And want a lot.

They're still playing their game, but it's almost practice now. The touches are deliberate and lingering and the little chaste kisses move away from relatively safe zones (though Shishido begins to suspect Choutarou could kiss the tip of his nose and leave him squirming).

Three days before they have to leave Choutarou kisses the inside of his leg, just above the knee he's bandaging after a rather rough game of tennis. It's a hot, open-mouth press there, that stays. Shishido's jaw drops open a little bit at how naughty that looks, in a disturbingly sweet way.

Two days before they have to leave Shishido gets fed up enough to open his mouth on Choutarou's neck, tasting him there, the salty tang and the skin. And he kisses him there, over and over until Choutarou is so much as putty pressed into the corner of the couch, eyes lidded.

A day before they have to leave, Choutarou stops him as he comes fresh out of the shower, eyes intent. Placing his large hands at either side of his ribs, he holds him and leans in to nuzzle a small kiss at the pulse-point in his chest, which leaves it in a galloping flutter of disbelief. After, he sits between spread knees on the ground, Choutarou ruffling his hair dry.

The night before they have to leave, Shishido finds himself on his back, panting as Choutarou does it again and again, going as far as to open mouth and catch his heartbeat on the flat of his tongue. 

They don't sleep much at all.

***

Most of the planning went into figuring out how to get there.

By car seemed the most obvious and convenient way, but before long Shishido decided to make do entirely by public transport. They have time for it and he thinks Choutarou might enjoy it more, the experience of traveling like that. As they partly get away to be rid of the restrictions snaring them, but mostly him, this seems like a good way to do it.

It's a long trip. They wake up at the crack of dawn, or rather, they leave bed at the crack of dawn. It's a tangle of lingering hands and rubbing limbs. Shishido can't believe they're touching like this, so intimately familiar and yet haven't really done anything.

Dawn is just a hazy smear at the east when they head for the train station. Shishido feels bleary around the edges, but Choutarou is wide-eyed to soak it all up. The OLs in their suits and high heels and briefcases seem to confuse him as much as chaotic soup of traffic does. So near to the station it becomes quite the adventure to dodge and wind and slip through the crowds of people. Knowing how it all works, technically, is way different from being in the middle of it and having a crotchety obaasan shove her plastic shopping bags into your stomach to steal some space.

The first train is a crowded bustle, packed with dapper salary men and loud teenagers.

But the second train is easier. They have a seat, Choutarou by the window, nose nearly smashed up against it as he peers outside. The landscape rushes by. It's rice paddies and maples and waving fields one moment, iron and concrete buildings next. People, lots of different people. Some girls board and flutter their lashes at Choutarou, who kinda looks confused. Shishido smiles behind his hand.

There's nothing that shows Choutarou for being anything other than human, and very so at that. He's polite when they move through the crowds, apologizing in the wake of Shishido's elbowing advance. His mouth curves when an older sister crosses their path, pulling along a chain of three younger siblings, lined up like ducklings. His lashes flutter at the onslaught of food and drinks being sold at the station, looking left and right to see what is on display.

The further they travel south, the more lush natures becomes There are rows of trees bearing citrus fruits, endless stretches of rice paddies with the sun spilling low and rich over them. Choutarou sits watching it all, taking it in like as though the visuals ease a sort of starvation. 

On the seat between them, their fingers touch and curl together.

***

They have to hitchhike. It really is the middle of nowhere.

Giant Camphor trees rear mighty above their heads where they are dropped off at a dubiously deserted gravel path. There's moss and vines on the trunks of the trees and birds chirping everywhere.

Choutarou tips his head back and breathes in, while Shishido scowls at the dodgy scribble of a map the old coot mailed him a few days ago.

"There should be a trail nearby," he murmurs, peering over the edge of the printout and seeing none.

Still smiling, Choutarou points uphill. "Let's go that way," he says, starting to hoist bags up his shoulders, along with a violin case and his huge maps to hold artworks in them. At least he carries it all himself.

Rolling his eye at the display, Shishido tugs at the rim of his cap, shading his eyes. Then he gathers up his own luggage and they start up the trail.

They do find the house… cabin, rather. It's kind of perched next to a rocky stretch of mountain, roof alive with tufts of grass and small plants. They wade through high grass to get there, smelling earthy, rich forest. There's the tang of the ocean in there, salty and fresh, but it is fleeting on the air and mostly overpowered by the jungle they seem to be in. Small white butterflies skitter around an overgrown monster of a rose-bush and there's an orange tree, too.

It's a ramshackle thing, in need of a lot more than some minor fixings. But Shishido loves it instantly. It doesn't make any sense, it's run down and in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing there. Nothing but them that is.

And maybe that's all it takes.

Inside proves to be as old as the outside. Furled leaves pile into the corners and tatami mats fray where the years of passage have worn them thin. But it is not unsalvageable. It's mostly one huge room and a smaller one, screened off by sliding doors, then an opening leading to a kitchen and finally a bathroom, with a deep stone bath. There also seems to be quite some storage space to tuck things away. Enough that even if they had brought all their belongings they'd have storage room to spare.

Shishido realizes he's picturing him…  _them_ , living there.

When Choutarou's arms sneak around him from behind and a kiss is dropped on his crown, he knows that Choutarou is thinking about exactly the same thing.

***

There's a tense moment when they find the futon and shake it free of dust. Their eyes meet over the blanket and Shishido feels his chest screw as tight as a vice with nerves. In the end they drape it over a chair in the kitchen to let the mustiness air out.

They go for a walk instead.

Shishido doesn't think he's ever been somewhere as green and wild before. They follow a barely visible trail, or rather Shishido follows Choutarou's tall form as the latter rather eagerly hurries ahead, as though every single damn Camphor tree and brambly undergrowth is worth staring at the way he does -mouth parted and eyes wide like he needs to have studied all of them. Today.

"Have you any idea where you're going?" Shishido mutters after a while. He bats at an insect, drawn to his blood.

"Down this trail!" Choutarou laughs, using tree-roots as steps as he clambers down a rather steep hillside. Ocean winks in the distance. It's not undoable, but there's plenty of ground to cover to reach it -enough to get spectacularly lost in. And all he has is the sketchy map from the main road to their cabin.

Shishido looks at him and then back over his shoulder the way they came from. "I should've installed GPS on you before we went," he grumbles. He's not fast enough to duck the clump of grass thrown at him.

It's warm and sweltering and humid. Shishido fans his face with his cap. He's hot and sweating and he's kinda starting to hope they'll find the ocean soon. Eventually he takes of his shirt and tucks it through his belt loops. The weak little breeze there is feels good on his skin. It's the end of the rainy season and today is dry, but the steam rising off the forest suggests a recent squall of considerable size.

Still, it's nice.

Shishido never thought he could feel so calm and happy to be hiking through the forest like this, with a film of water covering his body and the sun heavy on the back of his neck when the treetops let it through. It probably has something to do with Choutarou (and a lot with Choutarou's bare torso after he follows his example) and his curiosity. He peers into bushes where small animals skitter about, reaches to let his finger pads linger over fuzzy moss crusted into the bark of the trees. He tips his head up, smiling to the skies.

He moves around, perfectly human. Knowing full well all of it is semi-organic artificial components and how they have been attached and made to work doesn't help Shishido in seeing any evidence to the contrary. His skin flexes and moves, muscles stretch between his shoulder blades. He breathes, an aesthetic aspect mostly, helping only to power minor functions. Bluish veins run under his skin, now raised due to the heat, even though cutting him wouldn't show a single drop of blood. Yet he can blush and flush, a complex chemical reaction that took years to develop, and sweat. His mouth was wet on Shishido's chest this morning and his eyes gleam. He knows how it works. But he remembers the soft, fleshy side of his body and the swell of his thigh and the hard slats of ribs, his arching hips.

By now he has to admit that Choutarou could probably look less human than he does and Shishido'd still feel that dizzying rush in his lower belly when he lets his eyes linger on the dip of his spine above his waistband.

He has his own mannerisms and pattern of speech (horrifyingly polite at that, the dork), and his voice took on a coloring that was distinctly him. His eyes show emotion and he blushes in his own distinct way -two dark patches on his cheeks as opposed to Shishido, whose flush spreads all the way down his chest. He has hobbies and interests, aversion to certain things and moral belief in others. Technically he could operate on a higher lever, but instead he reasons and behaves like a human does.

He dreams.

He feels.

He loves.

Shishido walks a small distance behind him, hands deep in his pockets and shakes his head to himself.

He truly did it. 

 

The first to succeed. But maybe also beyond that. It's not just perfect AI and perfect emphatic, emotional aware AI at that. There is a soul in there.

Choutarou is a person, a human being despite his hand-crafted artificial body.

Maybe there are no degrees in AI. Maybe once you actually get there, in the metaphysical realm and manage to make a spark there -you just get this, a someone.

If that is the case, Shishido thinks, then the research his colleagues are conducting, scientists all over the world hoping to wield the discovery for whatever purposes -are doomed to fail. Even if it is world-domination through AI-driven tennis playing androids, or whatever.

Before long robots of Choutarou's AI caliber will have to be recognized for what they are -human. It's inevitable. All minor categories in a social setting have been so. By bloody and horrifying means that usually accompany these revolutions -wars, slavery, attempts at genocide and much more than he wants to think of. 

Were he any less selfish, then Choutarou would be the catalyst for this, to ensure that any other AI-driven androids to spring forth out of science won't have to suffer needlessly for decades, for longer even.

Were he a better person, he might insist on it. 

Instead Shishido watches Choutarou be completely free to be himself and lets his mind linger on how it might be to live here.

With him.

***

Choutarou is careful in the ocean, only ankle deep in. 

Standing next to him, Shishido licks the salt from his lips. The breeze ruffles his hair away from his forehead. Above, the skies are steely gray with rain. Before it crashes down the temperature will rise wet and unbearable.

They walk the length of the small cape, after Shishido plants a branch in the pebbly sand to mark where they came out of the forest.

"So?" Shishido asks after a while.

"What?" 

"The ocean. Like the smell?" he clarifies. 

Choutarou takes the seashell Shishido once brought him out his pocket, tosses it at him. Catching it one handed, he grins a little, rolls it over the palm of his hand.

"I don't know how to thank you," he murmurs, voice distant. 

"Whatever for?" Shishido demands, frowning.

"How many people would so this for something that's not real?" Choutarou says softly. He swallows, throat bobbing.

Shishido stops walking, suddenly angry. "I'm not hauling your ass all the way out here for you to whine about being artificial."

"I-"

"No, shut up," Shishido snarls savagely and takes two steps to close the distance between them. "Enough," he hisses, breath ragged and then he grabs a handful of Choutarou's hair to force him closer so he can finally kiss him and end this madness.

It's not nice. Shishido is rather brutal and the kiss isn't so much as their mouths meeting as it his him trying to punch some sense into Choutarou's head with his own. He draws back, teeth bared. Choutarou blinks, shocked.

Not quite like he imagined  _that_ , either.

Dammit.

He turns, intending to stomp back the way they came from, fume for a while.

Before he can fully turn, however, hands reach for him and draw him back, frantic and sudden and then his mouth is brushed -lightly. It's a small peck. Almost chaste if Choutarou didn't pull back a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and bite his bottom lip as he inhales shakily.

"Oh god," he breathes.

Shishido tip-toes, following that mouth, and kisses back, and again, and again until Choutarou's hands are in his hair, angling his head for more. Just that first, pressing is all, still pecks until their lips start to cling, more so when Shishido parts his on a small noise when he feels a hand on the side of his body, thumb slanted along his lower rib and the rest of that hand splayed hot like a brand.

They have touched before. They've put their mouths on each other before, but this, lips yielding against each other and the heat of another mouth, the taste of it, the fullness of their lips and hot exhales is the most erotic damn thing they have ever done to one other. The natural curves of their lips catch and fit together, just so, Choutarou's fuller than his own, and the bottom one swollen and soft when Shishido suckles lightly on it.

The world is quiet, the ocean still.

Choutarou is trying to touch him everywhere at once: the hand on his waist running mindlessly along his back, knuckles brushing sweetly up Shishido's throat to his jaw, his chin and they gasp, both, when Shishido opens his lips and a hand on his hip clenches convulsively when their tongues meet. He pulls back before it can become more than just that, lips shining and eyes dark. 

"Shishido-san, are you-"

A sharp bite at his neck brings him up short, jumping. "If you ask whether I am sure, I'm kicking your ass."

"A-alright," Choutarou whispers, looking at him and looking at him and just  _looking_  and Shishido could die happy now, having seen that.

"And call me Ryou," he adds, before wrapping his arms around Choutarou's neck and dragging him down.

It feels right. Their lips slack and accepting and the heat of it when he can feel Choutarou's tongue against his own, tasting and there, inside of his mouth. Their bare chests brush and Shishido shudders and Choutarou smiles and gathers him closer for more, cupping his face as though to drink from Shishido's mouth, to breathe him in. Deep, searching kisses follow, slanting in hungrily before lifting away to breathe and rub their faces together just to dip down for more. Their lips linger, wet and moist and Shishido seems to burn, blood laced with ice-cold fire that leaves him humming and weak-kneed and wanting.

They pull back a little, just to smile and rub noses, before kissing again, because they can't seem to stop, not ever, please.

Shishido's heart beats loud and hard enough for the both of them.

***

It starts to pour as they hurry back.

Choutarou seemed perfectly ready to undress Shishido right there, and lie them down on their discarded clothes, rain notwithstanding.

Not that that doesn't seem like an absolutely brilliant -if scandalous- idea, but Shishido wants it to be perfect now. Everything has gone different than he thought it would and he's made so many mistakes and he's gotten so many things wrong before. But not this. Not now.

In a bed, safe and dry.

For a while Shishido doesn't think they'll make it back, not with hands lingering and reaching and rain soaked mouths seeking each other out for more. He'll be pressed against a tree, bark digging into his skin, thinking  _fuck it, I can't wait_  but then he knows why he's doing this and with whom and he'll take Choutarou's hand and lead him.

When the cabin finally looms through the rain, Shishido nearly cries with relief, since he can only stay virtuous for so long when Choutarou keeps touching him, murmuring things like 'I need you' and 'please' and ' _Ryou_ ', his name.

But it's a comfort to stumble inside and out of the rain. The interior is shaded in blues and grays, muted and dream-like. They find towels, which they take with the futon and sheets into the large main room, where their unpacked bags still sit. The sliding doors are opened and the patter of rain on grass and leaves loud.

They dry each other, pressing soft towels to one other's bodies, slowly undressing at the same time. 

Calm and easy, even when Shishido fears his heart is making a valiant attempt to bridge the gap between the two of them, so it can go and stay within Choutarou. Who smiles and laughs softly, pressing his face to the visible flutter as he murmurs things that makes it pound even crazier and make Shishido blush harder.

Then it is like he dreamed, velvety and warm -twin cries of relief as they finally get to tumble skin-to-skin onto the cool, white sheets. Choutarou is impossibly warm on him, and Shishido could drown in the visceral pleasure of his weight on him, with hands in his hair and a mouth on his, kissing frantic and hot, never quite breaking it, not even when they murmur at one other, not when the rise and fall of their bodies change to match Shishido's pulse, and not even when they watch one other, eyes tied like their bodies at the very end with Choutarou saying his name over and over, like he was frightened, and Shishido answering, understanding and merciless.

It was everything he'd ever dreamed about. It was nothing like he'd ever dreamed about. 

It was more.

It was simple.

It was terrifying and violent and sweet and gentle.

After, they lay in an exhausted heap with Shishido still on his back, boneless and Choutarou leaning half-over him, fingers tracing the lines of Shishido's face. The skies are still crashing down outside, and water hazes inside coolly to dust their bodies with a sheen. They skin clings hot, unwilling to relinquish the connection.

He leans down and kisses Shishido's cheek. "Now what?" he asks, question warm and fraught on his cheek.

Turning his head to brush their aching, abused mouths together, Shishido whispers. "Sleep. We'll worry about it tomorrow."

"Ryou," Choutarou says, sudden and choked.

Shishido pulls him down, curls his body up against him, breathes in. "I know," he says. "Me too."


	7. Part 7

Three weeks go by like water slipping through a sieve.

If Shishido were a sappy idiot, he'd say it were the happiest of his entire life. They are, but he doesn't say it, doesn't need to when they both know it. 

It's a haze of green trees, leaves bright like emeralds in the burning sun and sudden downpours. When the skies are clear they go outside and walk a lot. On the second week they manage to procure a bike in the nearby village and they use that instead, one for the both of them. Choutarou usually pedals, while Shishido sits on the luggage rack, as he weighs much less. He's more than happy to rest his forehead on that working back, warm sun-lit dapples shifting over his face.

They explore and go places, waterfalls and mountains and shrines, local villages. Once they spend three entire days searching for the perfect vista Choutarou is determined to paint and when they finally find it they wind up in the grass, hands peeling clothes away. They go back the next day and do the same thing, but Choutarou also draws, a little bit. They return to the cape, where Choutarou has his way also, but admits that the pebbly surface was kinda painful and the wind rather drafty, to which Shishido rolls his eyes and smirks.

The forest is endless, the mountains rugged. It's not an easy place to live, but Shishido thinks he could get used to it despite it. He climbs trees and plucks oranges, which he throws down for Choutarou to catch -until he nearly falls out of one and barely avoids breaking his fucking his neck. They also find peaches and colorful flowers and plants that grow sticky little seeds that cling to your clothing.

When it rains, they explore each other, sometimes until they both hurt and have to stop, snickering like embarrassed teenagers. They also fix what they can, leaks and broken power outlets, rusty hinges and worm-eaten panelling. There's white paint and they use that, too, which makes everything look newer, like a beginning. Sometimes they just lie entire afternoons on the futon, kissing and talking softly, as rain sluices from the rumbling clouds.

Shishido thinks that maybe it's okay if they are selfish like this, just the two of them hell-bent on their mutual happiness.

It's not impossible, either. The village is small, but provides everything they need. If he had to find work here it'd be simple menial labor. He could do that, or he could scout out one of the small cities and inquire about for something else. If they approach it cleverly this might work for Choutarou, too, and they could build something here.

They could live here.

Together.

There'd be no constant fear, the pressure, the knowledge of everything being right when the world says it not. No restrictions and eyes watching and judging and saying: no.

His family -mother father brother-, Jiroh, his friends but also family and his job and Oshitari, his friend somehow, every single fucking thing he knows and loves he'd have to let go, all of it, leave behind to have Choutarou instead.

 

Choutarou is asleep next to him, he's bare and his skin glows blue in the rain and he's  _him_. Shishido lies down next to him and sighs, starting to realize he made up his stubborn head about this before they even came here.

That doesn't make it easier.

***

In one of the backwater rural villages there's a market underway as they arrive. Local specialties, carts overloaded with fresh fruit and vegetables, rolls of fabric and hand-made jewelry.

Shishido buys some sort of mystery meat on a skewer and eats it up, trailing behind Choutarou's curious advance through the crowd.

He pauses only once and then for a long time to look at something, eyes intent. Standing to the side Shishido glances around, a little bored and still hungry, until Choutarou moves on, eyes lingering wistfully on the object.

Shishido manages to lose him (only not really) half an hour later to backtrack.

He buys it, the necklace, even though it's just a silver cross on a chain.

***

It looks really fucking good on him though.

Definitely likes it there, resting against that chest, winking at him. Shishido presses his mouth where the chain drapes around his neck and suckles. There's a little sigh from Choutarou as he bares his neck for more.

It's their last day here and it is nearly gone. An orange spill of late afternoon light sets everything shining and warm. Their bags are packed, ready to go. Shishido doesn't intend to go much further in the little time left to them than this futon and the mussed sheets.

There's time to do more than just lie together and breathe, and Shishido could and wants to, actually. But first they have to talk.

Choutarou is waiting for him to do so. His question from the first day has remained unanswered up until now. Both of them just wanted to hang onto the rising tide between them in the past few weeks, until now, when they have to.

Never before has he felt like this, aching in such a base, consuming way for someone and he thinks he has the answer, if Choutarou agrees. Oh god, Shishido hopes so badly he'll agree.

Thick lashes lift and Choutarou looks at him, eyes quiet. "Now what?" he repeats softly.

Shishido finds himself nervous, hands shaking. Pushing himself up he sits next to him, cross-legged and naked and completely at ease with that, but he hardly dares to ask what he needs to. 

Eventually he clears his throat and asks: "Are you happy, Choutarou? Here with me?"

Fingers play with the cross, tracing the contours. "Yes," he answers, plain and simple.

"Would you…would- dammit," Shishido curls his nails into his palms, encounters the shiny patch of skin on his right palm. "We could have this. Would you like to… to stay?"

There's a pause and then Choutarou sits up, also, opposite of him. The cross dangles into the air as he leans forward. "You mean… here?"

"Yeah," Shishido goes. "Like this."

Choutarou doesn't answer right away, though he opens his mouth to do so. At long last he manages a confused, "But your family. Your friends. Everything- you'd have to-"

"I know," Shishido interrupts with a sigh. "I know. Just answer already."

A wild little laugh, as Choutarou shakes his head, disbelieving. "Yes. Yes, of course. I can't believe you have to ask."

"I gotta." Shishido presses his eyes shut, hard, before opening them, expression morbidly serious. "I gotta. Listen. Choutarou, you know right? I will die" -he whips out his hand to smother the frantic denial that's about to burst free, fingers pressed against parted lips- "I will. You know that. I will die. Someday. I might get sick or have an accident. But if I'm lucky… I'll. I'll grow old, Choutarou."

They stare at each other over the length of Shishido's arm. "You won't," he whispers.

A stuttered exhale escapes through those lips and Shishido lowers his hand. His eyes ache, warm, but he ploughs on. "You'll always be like this, on the outside. You know I won't look like this forever… I'll get… I dunno, gray hair and waste away. I'll be weak and maybe sickly and ugly and old. I'll have wrinkles and I might even go blind, or worse, wrong in my head. You won't."

He pauses.

"Ever," he adds.

The intention was to be strong. Calm and collected. It's the truth and they both know it, but Choutarou fears Shishido's mortality enough not to want to ever mention it. Instead he finds his lips shaking and he's fighting to keep from being a weak idiot. He's been a weak idiot before around Choutarou and never again.

Choutarou looks at him. For some reason he's calmer now, more so than Shishido is, who feels his mouth tremble with emotion.

"Ryou," he says. "I  _can_  die, too. We'll just have to plan it. Wipe my-"

He shakes his head, exasperated. "No, you stupid idiot,  _no_! Don't you get it?! You'll stay like this, they way you are now… all… all p-perfect and dammit, I'll be old and gross and maybe even incontinent or demented or other fucked up things  _before_  I die."

Comprehension dawns on Choutarou's face. Its edged with a sideways smile. "Is that what you're worried about? Hah," the smile spreads, up into his eyes. "Don't  _you_  get it? I can't get old. You're human. I'll not be able to do that, grow physically older, just like I won't be able to eat or cry or get sick or bleed and so much other things. Did that bother you when you decided to ask me stay here? No, because you know that already and accepted me being what I am. Who I am."

Still smiling, Choutarou reaches. His palms are warm and large on either side of Shishido's face as he holds it. Thumbs stroke his lips, tracing, and Choutarou presses a warm kiss between the tips of them. He leans their foreheads together and they sit there, naked, Shishido's back hitching when he murmurs: "I accepted you being what you were, long before I said yes just now. You'll just have to grow old for the both of us."

Shishido crawls into his lap and rest his ear against Choutarou's chest. There's no heartbeat.

"Alright," he says, starting to smile, too. "I can do that."

***

Both of them are quiet on the ride back, reflecting on the weeks that had just happened to them. The memory is sweet and dreamy, but the impact life-altering. Shishido tries to order his thoughts, tries to stop feeling sad. His family, his friends, he's not sure how to tell them, what reasons to give. Should he call the old man first or Atobe, to quit his job?

They'll need a car now, he thinks.

He wonders what Jiroh will say. Realizes he might not see Oshitari again, nor Oishi and any of his other colleagues. The memory of the party, of Oishi and Eiji kissing flits through his mind and he questions how it is for them and what they'll do about it. What they can do about it, with Eiji licensed as a Tannhauser product.

What he does decide is that he'll apologize to them both, somehow.

They get off at their station, stiff and sore from sitting down so long and from doing other things -to each other- three weeks long. Choutarou strikes a comical sight loaded like a pack-mule with all his bags, while Shishido just has one huge hiking bag strapped to his back, arms free. As they walk the short distance to their apartment, Shishido fishes out his mobile phone and powers it up. He took it with him in case of emergency, had he needed to reach someone. But it had been shut off the whole time; Shishido had been unwilling from the start to let anything or anyone disturb them.

The company jingle plays and the screen lights up. Immediately it vibrates, incoming messages, missed phone calls, voice mails. Shishido frowns at the sheer number of them as they start up the stairs. A lot of them are from Oshitari.

Choutarou fishes out the key and opens the door, while the phone starts to play the Star Wars theme song even as Shishido tries to open and read the first text -Oshitari again. Calling him right now.

With snap of his wrist he opens it and takes the call, " _What_?" he demands. "What is-"

"Ryou. Wherever you are right now, go back. Go back now. Are you listening? Get the hell-"

A hand touches his stomach, holding him back, shielding him protectively.

Shishido, confused with Oshitari screaming in his ear, glances at up at Choutarou -and knows enough. He looks through the doorway.

Sanada and Kite stand there.

"Shishido-san," Kite says, voice flat. "We need you to come with us."

***

"Don't hurt him!" Shishido yells.

"It's fine," Choutarou says softly. "It's fine."

It's not fine.

"Kite!" Atobe snaps. "Let go of it already."

Kite lets go. For the first time he looks like Kite the hitman and not Kite of the tight purple pants. Sanada next to him his ten times worse.

It's not fine. 

If he could, he'd punch someone, maybe do even worse. Atobe probably suspected this, he'd had him stay handcuffed. There hadn't been anything he could do, for a moment he'd braced himself to try and fight his way out, but Choutarou had shaken his head -barely perceptible. So they'd been taken along like sheep ready for slaughter and the only thing Shishido had managed to do was 'loose' his mobile phone, not that it gives Oshitari much cover when they decide to track his calls.

And now they're here, where it all started Shishido supposes, at Tannhauser. In Atobe's office, no less. It seems foreign and unreal, like he's seeing it for the first time. Especially in the clear summer light, the situation sits at discord, wrong. Like it isn't truly happening.

Choutarou is near the window, face carefully blank, but his eyes betray him. There's fear there, and not for himself.

Atobe is pale and drawn, his eyes dark. He doesn't look one bit like his usual snobby self. For once he seems frail and pained and rather terrified himself.

"Ryou," he says on a sigh. "If you promise not to punch anyone I'll have your handcuffs removed."

They stare at one other, a long, hard look, before Shishido nods -once. Sanada is surprisingly gentle when he removes the metal bands and Shishido rubs them to get the circulation going again. His body is wound tight like a spring, his eyes find Choutarou again, who's very, very quiet. 

And just this morning they were in Kōchi, one single entity as they drew close, free. 

Now Atobe rises, looking wan and tired. "You have no idea how lucky you are," he tells him, managing a weak smile.

Shishido feels himself bare his teeth, like an animal'd do when backed into a corner. "Lucky, huh? Didn't feel like that when you had your thugs grab us."

There's a cross look. Atobe scoffs, "Like you'd have come along when asked. I meant lucky that we got there before they did. Lucky that you're still alive and arrived when you did. They'd have shot you. You'd be dead."

"They?" Shishido repeats, shaking his head and gesturing at the situation at large. "Atobe, I'm not following here, what the fuck is going on."

A heavy sigh. Atobe perches on the edge of his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's rather simple. You were careless. First there was the continued mystery of hardware that went missing, which is accepted as I encourage you all to immerse yourself in your work. But over the course of the years, especially the last one, we saw that the whole sum was adding up to be a complete and finished android, not just an extremely elaborate experiment. A highly advanced android. The best. The newest."

It strikes Shishido as strange when nobody looks at Choutarou then, who still stands there, eyes tracking every single move but otherwise motionless.

Atobe continues, "Then you alerted someone I planted in the company with severe fluctuations in your behavior -coincidentally around the time some core parts and components went missing that would've been required to finish an android. Not only that, but project number Five had algorithms on its heart-drive nobody could comprehend, that didn't make any sense, also coinciding with the aformentioned. And then…" a shake of the head. "How can you expect to keep something like this hidden? Activated? While you let it play music and let it outside? Ryou?"

There's no use in answering. Shishido stares at him, cold and hard.

After a moment Atobe says, "You have been lucky that I am who I am and that I have the people working for me I do. We managed to keep you under surveillance, protected you, for a short while only, which was as long as we could. Because the government, or those that pull its strings if you will, have tracked you down too. Then you left and managed to disappear. I thought you'd made your escape, wisely so. We cleared your apartment of evidence -such as your laptop, you fool, and everything else. Yet this morning you appear back here and I realized you were a blind idiot and had just gone off on vacation. Taking your android with you. You blind, stupid fool. Have you any idea what this could cost you?"

At 'this' he points at Choutarou.

"He's got a name," Shishido snarls, lowly.

"Don't," Choutarou whispers. 

Still nobody looks at him.

Shishido takes a step closer and says quietly. "Atobe. I did it."

A sad smile, but there's a touch of pride in there, directed at him. "I know. Which makes it all the more of a waste."

That one word stabs him, low in the stomach and catches there, suspended in white-hot hysteria. "Waste? What do you mean?"

"We're losing precious time. I have to get you out of here, away and safe. If I can make it out to be merely that, that you've succeeded at programming an AI-complete android, I can keep you out of prison. With you out of the way and it wiped of all evidence that you tampered with-"

Nobody can stop him. He's got Atobe by the lapels of his collar, gasping for air before any of them can even consider drawing their guns on him. Neither did he know he could be so strong, lifting him clear off the ground for a moment, before slamming him hard into the desk. There's a painted noise as he shakes Atobe, hard.

"Nobody is touching Choutarou," he snarls low and ugly. "Not you, not anybody. Over my dead body."

"Don't make it come to that," Atobe whispers. He doesn't struggle, just stares at him, intently. "You don't understand it, do you. It's not me you have to worry about, but everybody else -and they are coming for you. Coming here, right now, I imagine. You have one choice: it or the both of you."

"Just me then," Choutarou says, raising his hands in surrender as everybody in the room snaps his head around to look at him. "I don't mind."

"No," Shishido says. 

Just no.

"But-"

"Shut up, Choutarou, let me handle this," he rasps, furious. "Don't you fucking dare say another word."

Choutarou swallows convulsively. "Let Atobe-san go first. He means well."

At the very first word to leave his mouth both Kite and Sanada's guns swerve to him, red dots appearing on either side of Choutarou's face, at his temples. "It spoke!" Kite says, sounding genuinely disturbed.

Atobe, still pressed into the desk, closes his eyes. Shakes his head. "Where are his Three Laws?" he whispers. "Ryou. Oh god. Kite, get Oishi and Yanagi in here."

" _Now_ ," he adds, when the man hesitates.

"Let him go," Choutarou repeats to Shishido as Kite hurries away, voice soothing.

Slowly, hands hurting from the force he used, Shishido lets go. Atobe coughs and rubs at his throat, but doesn't seem very upset about being manhandled.

"Have you lost your damn mind?" Atobe demands. "They'll put a bullet right into your brain regardless of what I say, if it keeps walking around unchecked."

"I'll go with-" Choutarou begins.

"SHUT UP!" Shishido rages and he does, this time, eyes wide and dark. Inside of his chest, something is starting to hurt -a slow leaking pain blooming outward from the left side of his chest. "Atobe," Shishido tries again. "Look at him, dammit. Look at him, in the eyes, and tell me what you see-"

"I-" Atobe protests.

" _Look at him_ ," Shishido roars, grabbing Atobe's bicep and whirling him to face Choutarou. "Just look."

He does, then. Atobe looks at him and Choutarou looks back, steady and pleading.

Finally Atobe turns around, eyes defeated. "Only you could raise something like this out of the ashes." Pulling away, he takes a step towards Choutarou, smiles -a twist colored with finality. "I am sorry," he says, but it sounds not like Shishido wants it to, an admittance to an mistake.

"It's alright," Choutarou says.

"No it is not," Atobe tells him. "It's not."

"What?" Shishido goes, voice rising as his innate sense of  _something wrong is about to happen_  blares.

Oishi arrives, out of breath, right then, Kite in tow. For a moment the whole room turns to look at him.

"Oh no," he says. "Oh no."

"Where's-" Atobe begins.

"Yanagi isn't in the office," Kite says tersely, his eyes watch Choutarou, hawk-like as if expecting him to go on a murdering rampage any second. 

Atobe seems in physical pain as he makes the next decision. "Get Oshitari instead."

Kite leaves again, and that leaves Oishi, shaking his head in absolute denial. "No," he says, to Atobe, to Choutarou, to Atobe. He avoids Shishido. "No."

"Please," Choutarou says. "I'd rather if it were you."

"Choutarou," Shishido whispers, feeling a rush of something so violent coursing up his back that it nearly knocks him out cold. "What are you-"

Nobody listens to him.

Atobe keeps shaking his head, not in denial like Oishi, but just at an general lack of comprehension and despair at the situation he finds himself in. "You don't have to. I won't force you. Not when you are…" that sad little smile is back.

"You won't have to," Choutarou says. "It's my choice."

And Shishido catches on. Something snaps in him. Somehow he rushes Oishi first, who goes down, the person directly in his way. Sanada is right behind him, bearing him to the ground, impossibly heavy, inhumanly strong. Someone screams, wild and wounded and then Sanada is clutching at his face, crumpling. 

All that happens within barely a beat of his heart and he's shaking Choutarou, saying things, wild and desperate, but most of all no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No No No No No No No No NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNonononononononono. NO.

n o

 

There's arms around him, Choutarou's holding him and rocking him, mouth open against his temple and answering, I'm sorry, I have to and then lifting his chin to kiss him and Shishido feels something go out of him when those lips press against his, and leave, possibly to go with Choutarou, whose eyes lift, away from his face -holding him, securing him, arms trapped between them with such gentleness- to something behind him. Against his mouth, he says: "I'm sorry. I have to, for you. I lo-"

The blow falls like an iron pike piercing his skull and the moment shatters, fragmenting into darkness as he loses consciousness. 

Choutarou, cheeks wet and mouth moving around that precious word, is the last thing he sees.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Shishido wakes to a white ceiling.

The taste of something metallic (blood?) lingers on his tongue. Everything aches, but not as terrible as his head does. His stomach turns, nauseatingly. It's worse when he turns his head, to see Oshitari sitting besides his bed. He's reading an old romance novel. Behind his glasses, his eyes remain fixed on one stop on the page. But they shoot towards him as he stirs and he stands up, fast, the book dropping to the ground forgotten.

"Thank god," he breathes. "You woke up."

Even blinking hurts. He didn't know he could hurt so and it is not just his head anymore. It's something else. Something is horribly, terribly and irrevocably wrong with him.

"Water?" he asks.

Holding the glass to Shishido's lips, he lets his sip, but not too much. Then he carefully lowers him again, his eyes loom dark wounded before Shishido's wavering gaze.

"Why did you come back?" Oshitari whispers. "I tried so hard. I betrayed Keigo. Why didn't you stay? Why didn't you pick up your phone? Why did you come back?"

He's nearly too weak to speak. "-you" Shishido manages, instantly winded.

Oshitari sighs and nods. "Me. Shishido, I… am not a psychiatrist for androids. Why would such a thing exist when nobody's managed to- well. Before."

A shake of the head. Oshitari takes off the glasses he doesn't need and sets them aside. "It's my fault. I should've realized you honestly didn't realize the danger you were in. The danger even Keigo couldn't protect you from. As soon as I realized what was happening to you. I never said anything about it, but when Atobe started to suspect I had to go along. I tried. It's my fault. But I tried."

Shishido stares at him. There's a splitting pain in the middle of his body, where the wound is, one that will never heal. For a moment he hates Oshitari, and Atobe, hates that he woke up and hates himself most of all.

"I am… glad I got to talk to him. He was amazing," Oshitari whispers. "Your Choutarou."

Then he opens his right hand. In the middle of it lays a silver cross on a silver chain, pooled around another small silver spherical object.

He dies there then, most of him does anyway. His body lies on the bed and tears track down his cheeks and he's gone.

***

It doesn't seem right that the world can go on, somehow. It's filthy and wrong that it can do so, but the day comes when his concussion has healed.

The only physical injury that can.

He takes the cross and the chain, but leaves the other thing. The thing that is as empty and dead as he is.

***

Atobe comes to see him, once, as he is preparing to leave.

He stands in the room, utterly defeated.

"I didn't-" he begins.

"I know," Shishido answers. "We were a team, once."

"We are," Atobe murmurs.

Shishido just looks at him.

"I am sorry," Atobe whispers.

***

He doesn't know  _what_  Atobe did or what it cost him to do so. Shishido only knows that he walks the streets as a free man two weeks later, with only a severe reprimand on his file and some dire warnings.

It doesn't matter. He doesn't care.

Whatever it was that left him is gone for good, a gaping black hole in his humanity.

Nothing really manages to get through to him.

Jiroh holding him, physical and alive, breathing and heart beating in agonized sympathy is all right, distantly.

That's it.

Shishido doesn't blame him. Nor does he blame Atobe or Oshitari.

Only himself, endlessly.

***

His mother cries when he tells her.

Shishido does a fairly decent job of hugging her and being soothing, stroking her shining brown hair.

It doesn't help, but it's all he has to offer.

He almost feels something, then, because he does love this woman, or would have if he'd still been able to. The fact that there is a feeble stirring within him makes him reconsider.

But then she asks about someone, that colleague of his, the tall one.

Shishido kisses her forehead and says goodbye.

***

There's not much left to take along. Shishido wants no reminders, nothing but the void in him, the only keepsake he needs. That and the scar on his right palm.

One backpack is all he needs -like last time.

It helps. All the money he had is gone. One payment, everything he had. He has no reserves. Doesn't need them where's he is going.

On a cold, late summer morning he gets on his motorcycle -all he has left with the clothes on his back and the hiking pack strapped into place- and leaves everything else behind.

Everything.

When he grabs the handlebars and kicks the machine into motion, a necklace spills out of the collar of his t-shirt. A silver cross winks on it.

***

Kōchi in September is not very different from Kōchi in July.

Cooler, a little. Dryer. 

All trees bear fruits now.

Shishido picks some pears and eats them, leaning against his motorcycle at the side of a sandy road. Rice paddies climb up the hillside behind him, water gleaming under the setting sun.

The fruit tastes sweet and fresh on his tongue, dribbles down his arm as he bites down. He wipes his mouth on his arm, careless. An old man with a goat-pulled cart passes him and bobs his head. Shishido bows back, watches him creep at a snail-like pace down the road.

Everything is still as green and wild as it was last time. Mist drapes between the mountains, veiling the very tips. Insects chirp busily, fluttering in tiny glinting specks through the grass under his shoes.

He stands there, for a long time, and wonders why he can't make himself go any further. It takes him a while to figure out he can still fear pain, or the possible advent of it.

Nevertheless, even that doesn't matter.

So he gets on, motor roaring to life and heads towards it.

***

His hair is damp with sweat when he removes his helmet. 

Shaking his head, he takes his time, moving slowly. Parking his motorcycle properly, loosening his baggage, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. His fingers shake. He doesn't know what he expects.

But not nothing. 

Shishido turns, sees the cabin,  _his_  cabin, and feels absolutely nothing.

Thank god.

Birds sing and dart through the branches above him and now it is the orange tree with its shaded, ripe and split fruit that attracts the tiny butterflies.

 

It's his.

Home.

 

Shishido walks towards it, teeth gritted at the weight of the bag, lugs it inside. There everything is like it was left -a patchwork of boarded holes and fresh paint. He looks, forcing himself to watch the place he was laid out on his back, being held. Nope, still nothing.

With a sigh, he lowers his bag, exhausted.

A shadow detaches itself from a darkened corner, looming over Shishido. He starts, heart giving a token pulse that has to pass for raw fear, and frowns.

The man frowns back, playful.

Shishido backs away and his heart  _is_  starting to pound now, his lips moving and his head shaking, unbelieving.

No.

It's not.

It can't be.

No.

But the man holds him then, arms cradling him to the front of his body, one hand cupping the back of Shishido's head to press it to his chest.

There's no heartbeat.

"It's me."

Shishido shakes his heads, but everything about him shakes, his body, his pumping muscle in his chest, his very soul. 

Choutarou dips his head and kisses the tears from his cheeks, smiling.

  

"Oishi says hi."

  
  
  
  


_-fin-_


End file.
